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
“Citizen and subject are synonyms with the difference having to due with the form of government under which one lives. (Republic or monarchy, respectively)”
Yeah, and it kinda makes a difference, since we’re arguing about what law applies to Obama, who happens to live in a Republic. I don’t care if throughout all of recorded time monarchies only considered the offspring of two subjects to be natural-subjects. It wouldn’t necessarily mean natural-born U.S. citizens need to have two U.S. citizen parents.
“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).”
Listen, you smug bastard, the excerpts quoted in the OED are random *to our purposes*. I’m sure the editors chose them carefully. But they probably didn’t have U.S. law in mind when they did so. If they had, maybe they could have helped us out by including a local entry from 1789.
“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.”
And I see nothing in the excerpts pointing to a necessary understanding of how the Framers viewed the term. That’s why I called them random.
“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.”
That’s only true if you come into the situation believing some citizens at birth might not be natural-born citizens, which I think you’ve noticed is not a view held by by the general populace, nor by the legal establishment.