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To: John Valentine
Of course, everyone physically present within the territorial limits of the United States is to one extent or another subject to the jurisdiction of its laws.

Foreign dignitaries are not. Unless you're willing to stretch the word beyond all meaning.

62 posted on 04/07/2006 6:41:47 AM PDT by highball (Proud to announce the birth of little Highball, Junior - Feb. 7, 2006!)
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To: All

Since the ratification of the 14th amendement in 1868 has any person who was born in the United States (other than the children of foreign dignitaries)not been a citizen of the United States?


63 posted on 04/07/2006 12:12:25 PM PDT by jamese777
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To: highball
"Foreign dignitaries are not. Unless you're willing to stretch the word beyond all meaning." Everyone within our territory is subject to our jurisdiction, unless we have an agreement with a foreign power saying otherwise. It's inherent to the definition of sovereignty. I'm just going to quote from the controlling case Wong Kim Ark, because it attempted to answer a lot of the questions raised on this thread:

In the great case of The Exchange (1812), 7 Cranch 116, the grounds upon which foreign ministers are, and other aliens are not, exempt from the jurisdiction of this country were set forth by Chief Justice Marshall in a clear and powerful train of reasoning, of which it will be sufficient, for our present purpose, to give little more than the outlines. The opinion did not touch upon the anomalous casts of the Indian tribes, the true relation of which to the United States was not directly brought before this court until some years afterwards in Cherokee Nation v. Georgia (1831), 5 Pet. 1; nor upon the case of a suspension of the sovereignty of the United States over part of their territory by reason of a hostile occupation, such as was also afterwards presented in United States v. Rice, above cited. But, in all other respects, it covered the whole question of what persons within the territory of the United States are subject to the jurisdiction thereof.

The Chief Justice first laid down the general principle:

The jurisdiction of the nation within its own territory is necessarily exclusive and absolute. It is susceptible of no limitation not imposed by itself. Any restriction upon it, deriving validity from an external source, would imply a diminution of its sovereignty to the extent of the restriction, and an investment of that sovereignty to the same extent in that power which could impose such restriction. All exceptions, therefore, to the full and complete power of a nation within its own territories must be traced up to the consent of the nation itself. They can flow from no other legitimate source. This consent may be either express or implied. In the latter case, it is less determinate, exposed more to the uncertainties of construction; but, if understood, not less obligatory.

7 Cranch 136.

He then stated, and supported by argument and illustration, the propositions that

this full and absolute territorial jurisdiction, being alike the attribute of every sovereign, and being incapable of conferring extraterritorial power,

has

given rise to a class of cases in which every sovereign is understood to waive the exercise of a part of that complete exclusive territorial jurisdiction which has been stated to be the attribute of every nation

-- the first of which is the exemption from arrest or detention of the person of a foreign sovereign entering its territory with its license, because

a foreign sovereign is not understood as intending to subject himself to a jurisdiction incompatible with his dignity and the dignity of his nation; . . . a second case, standing on the same principles with the first, is the immunity which all civilized nations allow to foreign ministers; . . . a third case, in which a sovereign is understood to cede a portion of his territorial jurisdiction, is where he allows the troops of a foreign prince to pass through his dominions;

and, in conclusion, that

a public armed ship, in the service of a foreign sovereign with whom the Government of the United States is at peace and having entered an American port open for her reception, on the terms on which ships of war are generally permitted to enter the ports of a friendly power, must be considered as having come into the American territory under an implied promise that, while necessarily within it, and demeaning herself in a friendly [p685] manner, she should be exempt from the jurisdiction of the country.

7 Cranch 137-139, 147.

As to the immunity of a foreign minister, he said:

Whatever may be the principle on which this immunity is established, whether we consider him as in the place of the sovereign he represents or, by a political fiction, suppose him to be extraterritorial, and therefore, in point of law, not within the jurisdiction of the sovereign at whose court he resides, still the immunity itself is granted by the governing power of the nation to which the minister is deputed. This fiction of exterritoriality could not be erected and supported against the will of the sovereign of the territory. He is supposed to assent to it. . . . The assent of the sovereign to the very important and extensive exemptions from territorial jurisdiction which are admitted to attach to foreign ministers is implied from the considerations that, without such exemption, every sovereign would hazard his own dignity by employing a public minister abroad. His minister would owe temporary and local allegiance to a foreign prince, and would be less competent to the objects of his mission. A sovereign committing the interests of his nation with a foreign power to the care of a person whom he has selected for that purpose, cannot intend to subject his minister in any degree to that power; and therefore, a consent to receive him implies a consent that he shall possess those privileges which his principal intended he should retain -- privileges which are essential to the dignity of his sovereign and to the duties he is bound to perform.

7 Cranch 138, 139.

The reasons for not allowing to other aliens exemption "from the jurisdiction of the country in which they are found" were stated as follows:

When private individuals of one nation spread themselves through another as business or caprice may direct, mingling indiscriminately with the inhabitants of that other, or when merchant vessels enter for the purposes of trade, it would be obviously inconvenient and dangerous to society, and would subject the laws to continual infraction and the government to degradation, if such individuals or merchants did not owe temporary and local allegiance, and were [p686] not amenable to the jurisdiction of the country. Nor can the foreign sovereign have any motive for wishing such exemption. His subjects thus passing into foreign counties are not employed by him, nor are they engaged in national pursuits. Consequently there are powerful motives for not exempting persons of this description from the jurisdiction of the country in which they are found, and no one motive for requiring it. The implied license, therefore, under which they enter can never be construed to grant such exemption.

7 Cranch 144.

In short, the judgment in the case of The Exchange declared, as incontrovertible principles, that the jurisdiction of every nation within its own territory is exclusive and absolute, and is susceptible of no limitation not imposed by the nation itself; that all exceptions to its full and absolute territorial jurisdiction must be traced up to its own consent, express or implied; that, upon its consent to cede, or to waive the exercise of, a part of its territorial jurisdiction rest the exemptions from that jurisdiction of foreign sovereigns or their armies entering its territory with its permission, and of their foreign ministers and public ships of war, and that the implied license under which private individuals of another nation enter the territory and mingle indiscriminately with its inhabitants for purposes of business or pleasure can never be construed to grant to them an exemption from the jurisdiction of the country in which they are found. See also Carlisle v. United States (1872), 16 Wall. 147, 155; Radich v. Hutchins (1877), 95 U.S. 210; Wildenhus' Case (1887), 120 U.S. 1; Chae Chan Ping v. United States (1889), 130 U.S. 581, 603, 604.

82 posted on 04/07/2006 9:23:48 PM PDT by Blackyce (President Jacques Chirac: "As far as I'm concerned, war always means failure.")
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