They specifically say that common law does NOT make the children born overseas of citizens automatically citizens. They are denying, in section 4, the suggestion by the other side that citizenship comes naturally from heritage, not birth location. That is why section 4 starts:
“IV. It was contended by one of the learned counsel for the United States that the rule of the Roman law, by which the citizenship of the child followed that of the parent, was the true rule of international law, as now recognized in most civilized countries, and had superseded the rule of the common law, depending on birth within the realm, originally founded on feudal considerations.”
At its beginning, they set up what they are going to expound on. That is why you need to learn to read paragraphs and pages.
It finishes with:
“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considered as declaratory or as merely prospective) conferring citizenship on foreign-born children of citizens have superseded or restricted, in any respect, the established rule of citizenship by birth within the dominion. 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. 2 Kent Com. 39, 50, 53, 258 note; Lynch v. Clarke, 1 Sandf.Ch. 583, 659; Ludlam v. Ludlam, 26 N.Y. 356, 371.
Passing by questions once earnestly controverted, but finally put at rest by the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution, it is beyond doubt that, before the enactment of the Civil Rights Act of 1866 or the adoption of the Constitutional [p675] Amendment, all white persons, at least, born within the sovereignty of the United States, whether children of citizens or of foreigners, excepting only children of ambassadors or public ministers of a foreign government, were native-born citizens of the United States.”
And, as I have shown before, native born & natural born were regularly used interchangeably by the US DA & the courts.
You’re not understanding what is written. Read this again, Missunderstands.
“IV. It was contended by one of the learned counsel for the United States that the rule of the Roman law, by which the citizenship of the child followed that of the parent, was the true rule of international law, as now recognized in most civilized countries, and had superseded the rule of the common law, depending on birth within the realm, originally founded on feudal considerations.”
They’re talking about whether one law supercedes another here. They’re not rejecting anything nor are they trying to reject anything. I explained that they’re looking for a reason to justify their belief that the 14th amendment will supercede the U.S.’s treaty with China.
The part that ‘finishes’ I just quoted for you in my previous post. I notice how you completely dodged providing any kind of rebuttal or even an explanation for your ill-founded belief on what you think this says. Further, you undermine your own misinterpreation with this part of the quote: “... all white persons, at least, born within the sovereignty of the United States, whether children of citizens or of foreigners, excepting only children of ambassadors or public ministers of a foreign government, were native-born citizens of the United States.”
Do you see the words all WHITE persons?? If you’re trying to establish that the United States REJECTED English common law ... this does it, but not in the way you mistakenly believe. The SCOTUS is admitting that our citizenship laws only applied to White persons and not ALL persons. Next they use the term ‘native-born’ citizens (clearly avoiding the term ‘natural-born’) ... and clearly they cannot use the term natural born citizen here because they cite and affirm the definition of NBC used by Waite in Minor v. Happersett.
Once again, I thank you for destroying your own argument and making mine for me. I really recommend you log off and find yourself a remedial debate class so you can avoid this kind of embarrassment and humiliation in the future. It’s not that I don’t appreciate your services as a floormat ... it’s just that my shoes can’t get any cleaner from such quickly repeated wipings.