Posted on 05/07/2010 5:56:48 PM PDT by bushpilot1
James K. Polk was born in North Carolina in 1795 and was the 11th elected President.
The author states he was the first natural born citizen elected President.
Can any one locate this book? Google books does not allow full access.
Perhaps the author gives an explanation.
“The immediate source of article II was the New York constitution of 1777”
Natural Born Citizen
Clause 5 is today chiefly of [Pg 387]historical interest, all Presidents since, and including Martin Van Buren, except his immediate successor, William Henry Harrison, having been born in the United States subsequently to the Declaration of Independence.
The question, however, has been frequently mooted, whether a child born abroad of American parents is “a natural-born citizen” in the sense of this clause.
The answer depends upon whether the definition of “citizens of the United States” in section I of Amendment XIV is to be given an exclusive or inclusive interpretation.
Corwin.
Why does he mention born to American parents?
By the Civil Rights Act of April 9, 1866 (14 Stat. 27), enacted two years prior to the Fourteenth Amendment,
“All persons born in the United States and not subject to any foreign power, excluding Indians not taxed, are hereby declared to be citizens of the United States; *
RIGHTS OF CITIZENS
Amendment 14
Section 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.
No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
Citizens of the United States
KIND AND SOURCES OF CITIZENSHIP
There are three categories of persons who, if subject to the jurisdiction of the United States, are citizens thereof:
(1) those who are born citizens, of whom there are two classes, those who are born in the United States and those who are born abroad of American parentage;
(2) those who achieve citizenship by qualifying for it in accordance with the naturalization statutes;
(3) those who have citizenship thrust upon them, such as the members of certain Indian tribes and the inhabitants of certain dependencies of the United States.
In the present connection we are interested in those who are citizens by virtue of birth in the United States.
HISTORY
In the famous Dred Scott Case,[2] Chief Justice Taney had ruled that United States citizenship was enjoyed by two classes of individuals:
(1) white persons born in the United States as descendants of “persons, who were at the time of the adoption of the Constitution recognized as citizens in the several States and [who] became also citizens of this new political body,” the United States of America, and
(2) those who, having been “born outside the dominions of the United States,” had migrated thereto and been naturalized therein.
The States were competent, he conceded, to confer State citizenship upon anyone in their midst, but could not make the recipient of such [Pg 964]status a citizen of the United States.
The Negro, however, according to the Chief Justice, was ineligible to attain United States citizenship either from a State or by virtue of birth in the United States, even as a free man descended from a Negro residing as a free man in one of the States at the date of ratification of the Constitution.
That basic document did not contemplate the possibility of Negro citizenship.[3] By the Fourteenth Amendment this deficiency of the original Constitution was cured.
[4]
JUDICIAL ELUCIDATION OF THE CITIZENSHIP CLAUSE
By the decision in 1898 in United States v. Wong Kim Ark,
[5] all children born in the United States to aliens, even temporary sojourners, if they are not exempt from territorial jurisdiction, are citizens irrespective of race or nationality.
But children born in the United States to alien enemies in hostile occupation or to diplomatic representatives of a foreign state, not being “subject to the jurisdiction thereof,” i.e., of the United States, are not citizens.
[6] Likewise persons born on a public vessel of a foreign country while within the waters of the United States are not considered as having been born within the jurisdiction of the United States, and hence are not citizens thereof.
[7] Conversely, a Chinese born on the high seas aboard an American vessel of Chinese parents residing in the United States was declared not to be a citizen on the ground of not having been born “in the United States.”
[8] But a child who was born in like circumstances of parents who were citizens of the United States was declared, shortly before the Civil War, to be a citizen thereof.
[9]
[Pg 965] NATIONAL AND STATE CITIZENSHIP
With the ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment a distinction between citizenship of the United States and citizenship of a State was clearly recognized and established.
“Not only may a man be a citizen of the United States without being a citizen of a State, but an important element is necessary to convert the former into the latter.
He must reside within the State to make him a citizen of it, but it is only necessary that he should be born or naturalized in the United States to be a citizen of the Union.
It is quite clear, then, that there is a citizenship of the United States, and a citizenship of a State, which are distinct from each other, and which depend upon different characteristics or circumstances in the individual.
“[10] National citizenship, although not created by this amendment, was thereby made “paramount and dominant.”[11]
Thus, it’s easily possible Corwin relied on these authorities rather than Vattel directly."
The creation of the presidency, 1775-1789; a study in constitutional history by Charles Coleman Thach
http://www.archive.org/stream/creationofpresid00thac#page/n311/mode/2up/search/natural
Basically states that the requirement for a "Natural Born Citizen" most likely came from Jay's suggestion to Washington.
"ARTICLE II
EXECUTIVE DEPARTMENT
NATURE AND SCOPE OF PRESIDENTIAL POWER
Creation of the Presidency"
“the law of nations was believed by the framers to be a legitimate part of the common law and self executing in the sense that it was unnecssary for congress to pass further legislation”
very legalize..cannot understand..cites vattel several times..
Someone translated..the French version of Vattel (1758) in the colonies..read recently Jefferson translated the manuscripts of Montesquieu into English..Jefferson liked word origins..they read and wrote..they did not have a television.
les naturels was translated into natural born in committee..
“Vattel” “calls for the skills of a new builder” Mackintosh
“Nations are regarded as individual free persons living in a state of nature.
For they consist of a multitude of men united into a state. Therefore since states are regarded as individual free persons living in a state of nature, nations also must be regarded in
relation to each other as individual free persons living in a state of nature.”
Christian Wolff, The Law of Nations Treated
According to a Scientific Method — In which Natural Law of Nations is carefully
distinguished from that which is voluntary, stipulative and customary, in Classics
of International Law 9 (James Brown Scoll ed., Clarendon Press 1934):
Christian Wolff first made reference to the state
as a “person”
Christian Wolff first made reference to the state
as a “person”
One definition of the noun “alien” in the current edition of the Oxford English Dictionary (“OED”) is: “A person belonging to another family, race, or nation; a stranger, a foreigner.
Thomas Jefferson Letter to John Garland Jefferson suggesting he study Vattel..date of letter is 11 June 1790. Virginia law books: essays and bibliographies By William Hamilton Bryson page 339
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