Posted on 09/08/2024 10:19:42 AM PDT by CDR Kerchner
(May 5, 2024) — INTRODUCTION
It is frequently argued by opponents of the “two-citizen parents” requirement of Emer de Vattel’s definition of a “natural born Citizen” (“nbC”) found in Book 1, Ch. 19, § 212 of The Law of Nations (1758), that the requirement “is nonsense.” Indeed, the 2015 article purporting to “resolve” the meaning of the nbC term (“C&K article”) by former high officials in the Department of Justice – Solicitor General Paul Clement and Acting Solicitor General Neal Katyal – completely rejects the relevance of the de Vattel nbC definition by ignoring any discussion of de Vattel or the definition in his 1758 treatise altogether. Ignoring facts, however, does nothing to eradicate them.
Instead, the C&K article deploys ipse dixit (“it is so because I say it is so”) to merely declare that “someone born to a [i.e., singular] U.S. citizen parent generally becomes a U.S. citizen without regard to whether the birth takes place in Canada, the Canal Zone, or the continental United States…,” adding, cryptically, that “a ‘natural born Citizen’ means a citizen from birth with no need to go through naturalization proceedings.” (Emphasis added)
Stated otherwise, the C&K article announces, ex cathedra, that as long as “a” parent – in the singular – is a U.S. citizen, that alone will suffice to render the child born abroad to that parent a “citizen from birth with no need to go through naturalization proceedings [thereafter].” The C&K article then somersaults to the non-sequitur conclusion that therefore, purportedly, “a person born abroad to a U.S. citizen parent is generally a U.S. citizen from birth with no need for naturalization. And the phrase ‘natural born Citizen’ in the Constitution encompasses all such citizens from birth.” (Emphasis added)
(Excerpt) Read more at calameo.com ...
(You said, “The term-of-art words “natural-born Citizen” are not found anywhere within the 14th Amendment nor Federal Statute 8 U.S. Code § 1401.”
Hmmm. I could just swear I have heard those words before. . .
LIGHTBULBS! Wong Kim Ark!)
Wong was never affirmed a natural born Citizen. He was affirmed a 14th Amendment Citizen based on his parents legal US domicile at his birth. Kamala’s parents weren’t legal US residents nor did they have permanent domicile. Anchor babies aren’t legal US natural born citizens.
Check this out too:
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2010-05-21/george-washington-book-case-closed-after-221-years/835090
George Washington book case closed after 221 years
Fri 21 May 2010
Friday 21 May 2010
New York’s oldest library can finally fill a gap left on its shelves two centuries ago when George Washington borrowed a book and failed to bring it back.
The first US president took The Law of Nations by Emer de Vattel from the New York Society Library on October 5, 1789 and, like many a less illustrious borrower, did not remember to return it, the library said in a statement.
An 1875 USSC case of Minor v. Happersett covered the NBC issue as part of the court’s opinion:
U.S. Supreme Court, Minor v. Happersett, 88 U.S. 21 Wall. 162 162 (1874), Minor v. Happersett, 88 U.S. (21 Wall.) 162
Look up “Minor v. Happersett” in google for it, but read the unanimous decision to find it.
> The document of interest:
> https://founders.archives.gov/?q=%22natural%20born%20citizens%22&s=1111311111&sa=&r=1&sr=
thanks. i agree (if that is what you are implying) that it is not a totally ironclad argument for or against anything. it just uses the two terms in parallel, suggestively.
i looked up Vattel’s term indigene. I saw that it is apparently an English term as well, meaning someone who is native to a country. what is interesting at least to me is that the FFs deliberately chose not to use the (English word, and also presumably direct translation) indigene when they had the chance to do so in the constitution. This implies to me that they (the FFs) instead chose to signal adoption of the English common law concept of “natural born subject” in its adjectival phrase form (”natural born”), and tacked it onto their usage of “citizen” as a modifier, as is allowed by the English language. Yes, they could have paused and defined the larger phrase. No, they did not pause and define the larger phrase. Up until 1776, they were living under colonial forms of English common law, so they all were familiar (or at least they all should have been familiar) with the adjectival phrase “natural born.” The 1797 Vattel English translation sounds to my coarse ears to the extent that indigene is congruent with natural born citizen, OK, and otherwise, as only so much revisionist backfill.
Hmmm, maybe this is why, in recent history, the USSC has chosen to duck the issue.
Disclaimer: I prefer not to stay in Holiday Hotels.
My Translation and Analysis of a Key Sentence in Emer de Vattel’s 1758 Treatise on Natural Law in Section 212 -“Des citoyens et naturels”: http://cdrkerchner.wordpress.com/2023/04/15/my-translation-of-a-key-sentence-in-emer-de-vattels-1758-treatise-on-natural-law-in-section-212-des-citoyens-et-naturels/
The Constitutional Convention signed off on the term in 1787.
The states finally collectively adopted the proposed Constitution in 1788.
So evidence dated within or near to that time frame is all fair game.
Before, also probative.
Early usage of the term natural born subject by limeys partook heavily of actual Natural Law.
As time wore on, monarchical and parliamentary intrusions dragged the term around so as to cover many examples of unnatural subjects, and non-born subjects.
We’re not Limeys. This has been definitively true since at least as early as the end of the Revolutionary War.
Washington was never shot like Trump was.
But, he had plenty of buttons blown off his uniform, and horses shot out from underneath him. His friend John Jay wasn’t pussyfooting around when he recommended to Washington, NBCs only as CinC.
You said: “i looked up Vattel’s term indigene”
You do not have to look up what Vattel mean by the term “indigenes”. He told you what he meant in the very sentence he used it in. He defined it for the reader of his legal treatise on the Principles of Natural Law. Again, he defined the meaning of the nouns he used in the very sentence he used them in at the time he wrote it. So don’t try to look up what a word means today or somewhere else or to someone else when the person using the word defined it when he used it in his treatis. He told you what he meant by the words he chose when he wrote the defining sentence for “Des citoyens et naturels” in French in his 1758 legal treatise. He wrote:
“Les naturels, ou indigénes, sont ceux qui sont nés dans le pays, de parents citoyens.”
Let’s do a direct translation of the key sentence using this online French to English site:
https://translate.yandex.com/?source_lang=fr&target_lang=en&text=Les%20naturels%2C%20ou%20indigenes%2C%20sont%20ceux%20qui%20sont%20nes%20dans%20le%20pays%2C%20de%20parents%20citoyens
The key sentence translated to English by that online translation site is:
“The natural, or indigenous, are those who were born in the country, from citizen parents.”
For more about what Vattel exactly wrote in 1758, see: My Translation and Analysis of a Key Sentence in Emer de Vattel’s 1758 Treatise on Natural Law in Section 212 -“Des citoyens et naturels”: https://cdrkerchner.wordpress.com/2023/04/15/my-translation-of-a-key-sentence-in-emer-de-vattels-1758-treatise-on-natural-law-in-section-212-des-citoyens-et-naturels/
Well, here we go again with this nonsense. Time to repost actual historical and constitutional reality:
If the Framers did not intend for the phrase they put into the Constitution - Natural Born Citizen - to mean what it meant at the time they wrote it, they would have written out a definition into the Constitution to redefine it. Since they did not, we can only assume it meant what the phrase meant when they wrote it out - the English common law definition - those born within the borders of the realm are naturally born citizens. There are a number of court cases where it is defined in this manner with regard to those born with far looser connections to the United States than Marco Rubio, Chester Arthur, (or Kamala Harris). The first case where it seems this was dealt with by a court was Lynch vs. Clarke in New York over a dispute with who could inherit property - there was a law on the books stating that only a “U.S. Citizen” could inherit property, and the presiding judge (apparently in this court the judge was called a “Vice Chancellor”) made this declaration: “Suppose a person should be elected president who was native born, but of alien parents; could there be any reasonable doubt that he was eligible under the Constitution? I think not. The position would be decisive in his favor, that by the rule of the common law, in force when the Constitution was adopted, he is a citizen...Upon principle, therefore, I can entertain no doubt, but that by the law of the United States, every person born within the dominions and allegiance of the United States, whatever the situation of his parents, is a natural born citizen. It is surprising that there has been no judicial decision upon this question.” In another case decided by the U.S. Supreme Court over the citizenship of a person born who was born to Chinese parents (it was illegal at that time for Chinese immigrants to become U.S. Citizens) it was declared that he was a natural born citizen by virtue of having been born in the United States, and Justice Field, who wrote the opinion, actually referenced the Lynch v. Clarke decision in the ruling of the Court: “After an exhaustive examination of the law, the Vice-Chancellor said that he entertained no doubt that every person born within the dominions and allegiance of the United States, whatever the situation of his parents, was a natural-born citizen, and added that this was the general understanding of the legal profession, and the universal impression of the public mind.” This case was In re Look Tin Sing. Another U.S. Supreme Court case was United States v. Wong Kim Ark https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/169/649 dealing with the same issue of a child born to Chinese parents made the same ruling and also declared him to be a natural born citizen in the ruling by virtue of his right to citizenship by birth. All of those cases were in the 1800s.
There was a U.S. Supreme Court case in 1939 with the title Perkins v. Elg http://caselaw.findlaw.com/us-supreme-court/307/325.html which dealt with the issue of a woman who was born in the U.S. to Swedish citizens who returned to Sweden with her when she was four years old. Her father was naturalized prior to this as a U.S. Citizen and held dual citizenship. She then came back to the U.S. and was admitted entry as a citizen at the age of 21. For whatever reason, her father later did away with his U.S. Citizenship status and the equivalent of the INS at the time declared she was to be deported. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled against this, finding she was a natural born U.S. Citizen by right of birth and even declared she was eligible to be President of the United States in the ruling. A past President, Chester Arthur, was born with an Irish father who was not yet naturalized as a U.S. Citizen, though his mother was born in Vermont where Arthur himself was born.
Detractors like to ignore all of information and court cases and instead rely totally on a case Minor v. Happersett - seeming to deliberately misquote the ruling - indeed, the justices specifically stated they were not making a finding of every scenario that constitutes a natural born citizen in their ruling: “The Constitution does not, in words, say who shall be natural-born citizens. Resort must be had elsewhere to ascertain that. At common-law, with the nomenclature of which the framers of the Constitution were familiar, it was never doubted that all children born in a country of parents who were its citizens became themselves, upon their birth, citizens also. These were natives, or natural-born citizens, as distinguished from aliens or foreigners. Some authorities go further and include as citizens children born within the jurisdiction without reference to the citizenship of their [p168] parents. As to this class there have been doubts, but never as to the first. ***For the purposes of this case it is not necessary to solve these doubts.***” Minor v. Happersett - full text of ruling https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/88/162
There are numerous reasons Kamala Harris should not be President. Making up bogus reasons to distract ourselves doens’t accomplish anything and just makes us look ignorant.
“...we can only assume...”
WADR, this is weak reasoning.
For all you know, the evidence needed to prove a sharply exclusive definition for the Constitutional term in question exists and is either waiting to be found, or has been found but is not widely or not publicly known.
In the meantime, it is not hard to show that all of the inclusive definitions are equally risible.
Nice essay.
However, I remain skeptical that the case is proven that the FFs would translated french term for a (swiss?) concept without providing a definition or a citation when a compound term and concept from English sources that fits their needs is handy, and the target audience is majority English fluent and French law / Swiss law ignorant.
A quick look at French reveals a usage of the term “citoyen de naissance” which translated is “citizen of birth” and some allege also means “natural born citizen.” If so, why did Vattel use one over the other? Is there some significance to him doing so?
But I come back to my first point which is in so many words that the most straightforward explanation (no French needed) might be the best.
If the Constitution were targeted at a French readership, written in French, and familiar with French/Swiss law, I would be more inclined towards a more arcane argument. What am I missing?
> So evidence dated within or near to that time frame is all fair game.
Not after (as in near but after), if one wants to be uber strict. In cases such as this one (when there is a relatively change of nationality, involving changes of jurisdiction) it may be prudent to be (uber) cautious.
Aha, good point which i would regard as coming from a different direction (anchor babies).
again, i only chose the most strict approach, and i was somewhat surprised and a little dismayed by the result.
i could imagine the FFs had no idea that there would be so much illegal migration in the future, and that this particular part of the constitution was to some degree hastily written.
(that is obviously not a solution to the immediate problems at hand...)
ok....i counter single parent, with the age-old international definition of maternal bloodline.
mom has to be e stablished citizen.
Multiple copies of the French language volume of de Vattel were in heavy usage by French-fluent Franklin and many other Continental Congressmen as early as 1775.
Yes. “After” is where potential problems creep in. Not necessarily always or in every case. Sometimes the provenance works out. Sometimes not. In general, though, there are more sources of complication and linguistic corruption.
One thing that England has separating itself from Europe that the USA does not have to separate itself from Mexico is the English Channel. This in turn might have led England to adopt a more “liberal” attitude towards jus solis based citizenship. I know both this and the NBC issue have been argued to death on FR in the past and so I must admit that here I have many more questions than answers.
Dream on, Dude. They are the same thing. As if, you didn’t know. Once again, from Wong Kim Ark:
“The foregoing considerations and authorities irresistibly lead us to these conclusions: the Fourteenth Amendment affirms the ancient and fundamental rule of citizenship by birth within the territory, in the allegiance and under the protection of the country, including all children here born of resident aliens, with the exceptions or qualifications (as old as the rule itself) of children of foreign sovereigns or their ministers, or born on foreign public ships, or of enemies within and during a hostile occupation of part of our territory, and with the single additional exception of children of members of the Indian tribes owing direct allegiance to their several tribes. The Amendment, in clear words and in manifest intent, includes the children born, within the territory of the United States, of all other persons, of whatever race or color, domiciled within the United States. Every citizen or subject of another country, while domiciled here, is within the allegiance and the protection, and consequently subject to the jurisdiction, of the United States. His allegiance to the United States is direct and immediate, and, although but local and temporary, continuing only so long as he remains within our territory, is yet, in the words of Lord Coke in Calvin’s Case, 7 Rep. 6a, “strong enough to make a natural subject, for if he hath issue here, that issue is a natural-born subject;” and his child, as said by Mr. Binney in his essay before quoted, “if born in the country, is as much a citizen as the natural-born child of a citizen, and by operation of the same principle.”
BTW, this response is NOT really to You, because you guys are like Sovereign Citizens, and there is no amount of logic, reasoning, or legal holdings that will ever change your mind.
This is for anybody foolish enough to not know better, and who thinks you guys know what you are talking about. Which, you don’t.
Two citizen parent birthers equal sovereign citizens lite.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gAumt46ocyc&t=16s
Amen.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.