OK. Back in post 462, you challenged the idea that “Also, the Supreme Court REJECTED the idea that English COMMON LAW supported someone being born overseas as being a NBS, or even a subject. See Section 4 in WKA.”
Since a page was too much reading, lets look at a handfull of sentences:
“Both in England and in the United States, indeed, statutes have been passed at various times enacting that certain issue born abroad of English subjects or of American citizens, respectively, should inherit, to some extent at least, the rights of their parents. But those statutes applied only to cases coming within their purport, and they have never been considered in either country as affecting the citizenship of persons born within its dominion.”
Not common law, but specific statutes affecting those born overseas.
Later, they write, “It has sometimes been suggested that this general provision of the statute of 25 Edw. III was declaratory of the common law. See Bacon, arguendo, in Calvin’ Case, 2 Howell’s State Trials, 585; Westlake and Pollock, arguendo, in De Geer v. Stone, 22 Ch.D. 243, 247; 2 Kent Com. 50, 53; Lynch v. Clarke,1 Sandf.Ch. 583, 659, 660; Ludlam v. Ludlam, 26 N.Y. 356. But all suggestions to that effect seem to have been derived, immediately or ultimately, from one or the other of these two sources: the one, the Year Book of 1 Ric. III, (1483) fol. 4, pl. 7, reporting a saying of Hussey, C.J.,
that he who is born beyond sea, and his father and mother are English, their issue inherit by the common law, but the statute makes clear, &c.,
— which, at best, was but obiter dictum, for the Chief Justice appears to have finally rested his opinion on the statute.”
and:
” Mr. Binney, in his paper above cited, after a critical examination of the statute and of the early English cases, concluded:
There is nothing in the statute which would justify the conclusion that it is declaratory of the common law in any but a single particular, namely in regard to the children of the King; nor has it at any time been judicially held to be so. . . . The notion that there is any common law principle to naturalize the children born in foreign countries, of native-born American father and mother, father or mother, must be discarded. There is not, and never was, any such common law principle.”
I hope that is not too much reading to establish that, as I said, “...the Supreme Court REJECTED the idea that English COMMON LAW supported someone being born overseas as being a NBS, or even a subject.”
You need to change your name from Mrs Rogers to Missunderstands ... What you quoted is NOT a rejection of English common law supporting someone being born overseas as a NBS. They’re trying to build a case that the such common law doesn’t override local laws in the other country in question. They’re doing this so they can say that Chinese law (in spite of a treaty that was contrary to this principle) doesn’t override the 14th amendment’s creation of at-birth citizenship for aliens (or non-NBC’s) and has NOTHING to do with natural born citizenship. NOTHING.
Gray writes, “Nor can it be doubted that it is the inherent right of every independent nation to determine for itself, and according to its own constitution and laws, what classes of persons shall be entitled to its citizenship.”
It reinforces this thought by continuing beyond the Binney citation you quoted by then quoting Lord Malmesbury who wrote: “Those born in the territory of a nation are (as a general principle) liable when actually therein to the obligations incident to their status by birth. Great Britain considers and treats such persons as natural-born subjects, and cannot therefore deny the right of other nations to do the same.” What the Supreme Court is doing is recognizing the possibility of dual citizenship, but they do NOT reject English common law here. You’re not reading and comprehending the entire argument.
At the end of section IV, the court writes: “So far as we are informed, there is no authority, legislative, executive or judicial, in England or America, which maintains or intimates that the statutes (whether considered as declaratory or as merely prospective) conferring citizenship on foreign-born children of citizens have superseded or restricted, in any respect, the established rule of citizenship by birth within the dominion.” This doesn’t reject common law, but ALLOWS for the possibility of dual citizenship. They HAVE TO DO THIS so they can say WKA is a citizen by virtue of the 14th amendment (not natural born).
The very next sentence says, “Even those authorities in this country, which have gone the farthest towards holding such statutes to be but declaratory of the common law have distinctly recognized and emphatically asserted the citizenship of native-born children of foreign parents.” If the court was REJECTING common law, they would NOT admit that there are authorities who say such statutes (for being born overseas) are declaratory of the common law. Instead, they’re saying common law or not, the country where the birth occurred can exercise its own statutory authority over the citizenship of those persons. For natural born citizens, this type of conflict between laws of two nations would not exist. If Gray considered WKA to be a natural born citizen, he would not have had to have to built such a lengthy and convoluted argument to make him a citizen. Do you not understand that??