Replies

I have an intimidating deadline and have been working hard all week, so I'm more on edge than usual.

Poor thing! It's perfectly understandable. Don't rush anything on my account. These words will pretty much stay where we put them unless the 'lectricity goes out.

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I just mean the political questions that are entirely a nation's own business, that don't have to do with its relations with other nations.

But the internal operation of the country IS the relations between the States. At least it was supposed to be.

We may see what Vattel was talking about was what our concept of 'nations' is....but in a functional sense, that's exactly what the States are. They are independent political bodies that joined together, and agreed on a few powers to delegate to an entity they created to protect their collective interests.

Tucker ties the law of nations TO the 10th Amendment and the 10th is strictly an internal operation. Ergo, the words of Tucker illustrate that Vattels law of nations does have an internal Constitutional operation, because the 10th Amendment has no affect on the federal government's relations with other nations.

That's my opinion of it anyway.

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That's the beauty of the Law of Nature and Nations. Whether you are an individual person, a State OR a nation, the Freedom of Association rule still applies.

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"The English statute of 11 & 12 Will. III (1700). c. 6." Whew.

LOL! 'Whew!' is right!

Okay, do you see any point in going back to all this? I mean, Blackstone was the standard in English law, and Tucker's annotated version was the standard in early America.

You can go to any lawyer's office in the country and find Tucker's work in the leather-bound tomes behind their desk, so can we agree these can be used as a standard in the discussion?

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And I think you're asking me to prove a negative:

You're right I did. I realized it later and had a "Doh!" moment.

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you posted a quote and said it referred to the book "Law of Nations" rather than just the generic term "law of nations," and asked me to prove it didn't.

All I can do is look at the evidence - 1] the Founders had Vattel in hand and were using it while they were writing the Constitution. 2]Kent said he was the 'most quoted' jurist during that time. 3] Tucker said the 10th was an 'express recognition' of Vattel.

So there are 3 pieces of evidence illustrating Vattel's work was both well known and in circulation at that time. And you basically, despite all 3 pieces of evidence, asked me to prove it was Vattel and not a generic law of nations Wilson was talking about.

Does that mean you think I should have to directly trace back to Vattel every usage of the generic term 'law of nations' we come across?

I'm not trying to be contrary, and I'm not even saying Vattel was used exclusively, but the fact is that we have to establish some kind of baseline somewhere if we want to sift fact from fiction. IMHO, with the evidence I know of, Vattel's the best chance we have.

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In (480), in response to what I thought was a request to prove that Wilson wasn't talking about the book, I posted three other sentences from the same speech (or whatever it was) that I thought clearly could not possibly refer to the book.

Okay, it's in 492 in response to 480, and it wasn't an intentional ignore, it was an I-really-didn't-see-it 'ignore'. It must've popped up after I was posting and I never scrolled back far enough to realize it was there.

Yes, you are correct in that there are several proper names in there that might indicate Vattel wasn't used exclusively for that particular lecture, and 2 of those, Grotius and Pufendorff, were also authors of the works called the Law of Nations.

But with the 3 pieces of evidence already present, it conversely doesn't prove the generic term law of nations never referenced Vattel at all.

[To clarify - the above isn't a hedge, it's just what I do. I have this habit of taking a piece of evidence, looking at it one way, and then looking at it again in reverse, so you'll see the word 'conversely' a lot]

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I knew we'd agree on something sooner or later.

I'm very glad that we did.

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This is pure assumption on my part, but I think you may at a very frustrating point in you quest, anyway. This, of course, doesn't help matters any, I just wanted to let you know something that it took me a long time to discover. Maybe it will help.

If you want to take an honest, unjaundiced view of the past, you have to forget everything you think you already know, and start, like the Founders did......from the beginning. You will never get a clear view of that time trying to look through the warped lens of the present.

Sincerest and most humble apologies again for any frustration, and if you make a point and think I ignore it, please do bring it to my attention.

Meanwhile, don't work too hard, stay safe, and

Big Hug

But the internal operation of the country IS the relations between the States. At least it was supposed to be....Tucker ties the law of nations TO the 10th Amendment and the 10th is strictly an internal operation. Ergo, the words of Tucker illustrate that Vattels law of nations does have an internal Constitutional operation, because the 10th Amendment has no affect on the federal government's relations with other nations.

I don't think we're going to get any further with this. What I understood you to be saying (and we've established that I don't always understand so good) was that since Tucker tied the LoN to the 10th, that meant the 10th was based on the LoN, which proved that the Founders relied on the LoN for guidance on internal matters. While I was saying that it seemed more likely to me that Tucker, in commenting on the 10th, said "in fact, it's just like the way Vattel describes relations between states in a federal republic," without implying (much less proving) any causation. It's a fine distinction, and until Tucker shows up here, probably not one we'll be able to resolve.

Okay, do you see any point in going back to all this?

Not really, though my question to you still stands: I said "natural-born subjects" could have alien parents, you asked for a reference, I gave that law as a reference, you said there were two types of natural-born subjects, I asked whether there was ever any functional difference between the two, and you pointed to that law. If we're not going back to that, do you have any other examples of where the distinction between a "proclaimed" NBS and a "natural" NBS made a functional difference?

So there are 3 pieces of evidence illustrating Vattel's work was both well known and in circulation at that time.

I've never denied that.

And you basically, despite all 3 pieces of evidence, asked me to prove it was Vattel and not a generic law of nations Wilson was talking about.
Does that mean you think I should have to directly trace back to Vattel every usage of the generic term 'law of nations' we come across?

Of course not, because I don't think most of them do trace back to Vattel. Again, the way I see it is that you quoted Wilson in support of the idea that our nation used Vattel as a "rule book." I think the burden of proof is on you to show that his use of the term "law of nations" referred specifically to Vattel and not to the generic term, and I don't think just showing that Vattel was popular and was quoted a lot does that.

My son's psychology textbook is called "Learning Psychology." I assume it's a popular Psych 1 textbook. But I think it would be foolish of me to parse a sentence like "I really like learning psychology" as an endorsement of the book.

I've really tried to do that. When I first heard the eligibility objections, my response was "Whaaaa...?" But rather than just take someone's word for it, I've read the arguments from both birthers and anti-birthers, I've read the relevant chunks of Minor and Ark and Ankeny, I've read all the historical excerpts you and Jeff have provided, and I've tried to figure out for myself what they meant. But I'm also wary of starting from "first principles" (or "common sense" or "natural law") because in my experience, what most people mean by those terms is "what I think." I'm interested in what the Founders thought as revealed by their words and actions, not in trying to figure out how they must have agreed with me.

Thanks for the kind words. And let me ask you something I asked the group in another thread and never got an answer to: what would it take for you to conclude you're wrong, that natural-born citizenship didn't depend on parentage? For me, it would be a clear statement from a court that a particular person was not an NBC because they didn't have citizen parents. As far as I know, there's nothing like that. But what would convince you?