[null and void]

If Obama was born in Hawaii then yes, he's a natural born citizen and Constitutionally eligible to be president.

Zat so?

Show me the legal definition of NBC that says that.

The one the Founding Fathers used was from Blackstone and Vattel.

They both say that NBC requires both citizenship by location of birth AND both parents (or by the most liberal interpretations, at least the father!) being citizens of the country of birth.

Any other circumstances allow divided loyalties or allegiance.

[OldDeckHand]

"They both say that NBC requires both citizenship by location of birth AND both parents (or by the most liberal interpretations, at least the father!) being citizens of the country of birth."

And how moved was the Supreme Court by this argument? They found it so compelling that they denied certiorari (I believe three times) without comment from a single justice. Yep, that's one compelling argument.

[thecodont]

Thanks for saying that, it bears repeating.

[Sibre Fan]

The one the Founding Fathers used was from Blackstone and Vattel. They both say that NBC requires both citizenship by location of birth AND both parents (or by the most liberal interpretations, at least the father!) being citizens of the country of birth.

Really? My understanding is that Vattel expressly pointed out that the two-citizen parent rule did not apply in Great Britain (much of whose common law was incorporated into the early US cases). And Blackstone expressly adopts the location of birth approach (because, of course, his commentary was about Great Britain's law). Do you have a link to where Blackstone adopts the two-citizen parent approach?

[Sibre Fan]

As a follow-up Blackstone's Commentary explicitly states that a child born on British soil - of alien parents, is a "natural-born" subject:

"The children of aliens, born here in England, are, generally speaking, natural-born subjects, and entitled to all the privileges of such. In which the constitution of France differs from ours; for there, by their jus albinatus, if a child be born of foreign parents, it is an alien."

[Non-Sequitur]

Show me the legal definition of NBC that says that.

Show me the legal definition of natural-born citizen that says otherwise.

The Constitution specifies two distinct ways of acquiring citizenship - natural born or naturalized. If you are not one then you are the other. If Obama was born in Hawaii then he's a natural born citizen regardless of his father's nationality.

The one the Founding Fathers used was from Blackstone and Vattel.

The two contradict, or weren't you aware of that? However, being Englishmen, I'd agree that the Founders would be more likely to adhere to Blackstone than Vattel. And according to Blackstone's "Commentaries on the Laws of England", Book One, Chapter Ten: "The children of aliens, born here in England, are, generally speaking, natural-born subjects, and entitled to all the privileges of such."

That would include Obama, wouldn't it?