[aruanan]

In deciding what the amendment meant to those voting on it, and what it should continue to mean, remarks made on the floor about it by the authors have tremendous significance.

There's a reason Justice Scalia and other originalists ignore legislative history in their jurisprudence.

"Do not separate text from historical background. If you do, you will have perverted and subverted the Constitution, which can only end in a distorted, bastardized form of illegitimate government." -- James Madison, primary author of the Constitution.

[curiosity]

"Do not separate text from historical background. If you do, you will have perverted and subverted the Constitution, which can only end in a distorted, bastardized form of illegitimate government."

True, but as Scalia has pointed out, legislative history is not reliable as historical background.

Legislators can and do say anything to try to round up votes. That's why it matters not what they say on the floor when debating the measure; what matters is the actual text of the law they pass.

The only historical background relevant to constitutional jurisprudence is textual. That is, the jurist must read the words of the constitutional text according to the meaning they had at the time they were written. Contemporary historical sources are useful only in so far as they assit the jurist to this end.

Hence the term, "natural born citizen" should be read according to how the founders understood this term. As it was a term of English common law, then it is English common law, as understood at the time, that guides our intepretation.

Unfortunately for birthers, English common law did not require two citizen parents for natural born citizenship. Birth within the domains of the sovereign were sufficient