Perhaps I should rephrase. I don’t see any *necessary* connection to who one’s parents are in the natural-born definition. Those instances of the term’s use cited are not U.S. law, nor are they exhaustive of all the uses of the term. They are random.
Moreover, the excerpt “The children of all natural-born Subjects born out if Ligeance of her Majesty .. shall be deemed .. to be natural-born Subjects of this Kingdom” does not say ONLY children born of natural-born subjects shall be deemed natural-born subjects. And as you know, we do not have “subjects” in America, we have citizens.
Also, the phrase “nor is a person born within them necessarily a natural-born subject” is hardly news. Children born as part of an invading army, children born of foreign diplomats, etc., have never been considered citizens. Notice the use of the word “necessarily”. The excerpt does not give the particulars of who among those born on a country’s soil qualify for citizenship, and therefore it leaves 14th amendment citizens from birth, for instance, open for natural-born status.
See, I can read English.
Maybe, but not very well. Citizen and subject are synonyms with the difference having to due with the form of government under which one lives. (Republic or monarchy, respectively)
Suggesting that the usage examples given by the OED are random just demonstrates your ignorance of what the OED is. Since I'm guessing that you do not own one, I suggest that the next time you are in a library you pick up volume one and read the introduction which contains some philosophy and history of the work (in the 2nd edition, at least, which is the one that I own).
It certainly is true that some usages of natural-born do not imply anything about parents. Language evolves over time, and the way we use a term may be different today from what it was 50 or 200 or 500 years ago. (liberal is a particularly spectacular example of a word whose meaning has change to nearly the opposite of what it was 100 years ago.) What is important, in law, is to understand the words and terms in the same manner as they were used when a law was drafted.
The 14th amendment is completely silent about what makes one a natural-born citizen as opposed to some other citizen outside the class of natural-born citizens. Pretending otherwise is absurd.
ML/NJ