Talk about stupid, you can't even understand simple language!
Kent said & I quote:
“(1.) Natives . . . If they were resident citizens at the time of the declaration of independence, though born elsewhere, and deliberately yielded to it an express or implied sanction, they became parties to it, and are to be considered as natives; their social tie being coeval with the existence of the nation.”
Those “resident citizens” who took part, deliberately yielded an to the revolution, NOT those whom came afterward for those were the 1st immigrants to the US. DUH!
You had better go back & read history as some natives were part of the revolution & became citizens. At the time of the revolution, the states determined citizenship, NOT the Congress of the confederate states. Another DUH!
James Kent:
When the United States ceased to be a part of the British empire, and assumed the character of an independent nation, they became subject to that system of rules which reason, morality, and custom had established among the civilized nations of Europe, as their public law. During the war of the American revolution, Congress claimed cognizance of all matters arising upon the law of nations, and they professed obedience to that law, “ according to the general usages of Europe.”* By this law we are to understand that code of public instruction, which defines the rights and prescribes the duties of nations, in their intercourse with each other. The faithful observance of this law is essential to national character, and to the happiness of mankind.
a Ordinance of the 4th December, 1781, relative to maritime captures. Journals of Congress, vol. vii. 185.
b L’Etprit des Loir., b. 1 c 8.
The most useful and practical part of the law of nations is, no doubt, instituted or positive law, founded on usage, consent, and agreement. But it would be improper to separate this law entirely from natural jurisprudence, and not to consider it as deriving much of its force, and dignity, and sanction, from the same principles of right reason, and the same view of the nature and constitution of man, from which the science of morality is deduced. There is a natural and a positive law of nations. By the former, every state, in its relations with other states, is bound to conduct itself with justice, good faith, and benevolence; and this application of the law of nature has been called by Vattel, the necessary law of nations, because nations are bound by the law of nature to observe it; and it is termed by others, the internal law of nations, because it is obligatory upon them in point of conscience.
s. Vattel, Prelim sec. 7
Kent only makes mention of Blackstone's English common law in passing 7 times in the entire 1st Vol of his commentaries when writing of our founding and what the founders used as a base for American laws aka the Constitution. However, Kent cites & quotes Vattel on page after page, on every topic including “natural” jurisprudence as shown above; which by the way is only 2 paragraphs from the 1st 2 pages of Kent's Commentary Vol 1. Kent's Commentaries on American law Vol 1 lays the foundation of American Law & it didn't come from English common law, but form the only laws for a moral & religious society which is that of the law of nations.
This argument, while interesting (excepting the personal attacks) is also nothing but quaint with respect to the Constitution as amended. The language of the 14th Amendment established two classes of U.S. citizens, those born within its limits and those naturalized. The meaning of the former in respect to those eligible for the Office of President has never been tested in the courts, but is widely assumed by most jurists to mean than anyone born on U.S. soil is eligible to be President. Obama might make a good test case on this question except that he was most likely born in the U.S. Until such a case is brought before the courts, your opinion is just as good as the next man’s.
Ms Rogers you had your head handed to you again.
Sorry I confused you. I wrote, “Those who helped give birth to the nation were grandfathered in. Those who followed, not having participated in the nation’s birth, would need to be born in the nation. And while they were not natives, they were considered as such - per Kent’s words.”
The first and third sentences are connected. I thought it obvious, since that was the point of contention, and that it would be understood that the second sentence was an aside.
If it helps you to understand, delete the second sentence and you have “”Those who helped give birth to the nation were grandfathered in...And while they were not natives, they were considered as such - per Kent’s words.”
Yes, I was specifically talking about the Grandfather clause. And since Kent was as well, and I was using his words, I thought that obvious.
Yes, Kent and others DID use Vattel - but NOT for citizenship discussions. Kent wrote, and the Supreme Court cited in WKA:
“Chancellor Kent, in his Commentaries, speaking of the ‘general division of the inhabitants of every country under the comprehensive title of aliens and natives,’ says:
Natives are all persons born within the jurisdiction and allegiance of the United States. This is the rule of the common law, without any regard or reference to the political condition or allegiance of their parents, with the exception of the children of ambassadors, who are in theory born within the allegiance of the foreign power they represent. . . . To create allegiance by birth, the party must be born not only within the territory, but within the ligeance of the government. If a portion of the country be taken and held by conquest in war, the conqueror acquires the rights of the conquered as to its dominion and government, and children born in the armies of a State, while [p665] abroad and occupying a foreign country, are deemed to be born in the allegiance of the sovereign to whom the army belongs. It is equally the doctrine of the English common law that, during such hostile occupation of a territory, and the parents be adhering to the enemy as subjects de facto, their children, born under such a temporary dominion, are not born under the ligeance of the conquered.
2 Kent Com. (6th ed.) 39, 42. And he elsewhere says:
And if, at common law, all human beings born within the ligeance of the King, and under the King’s obedience, were natural-born subjects, and not aliens, I do not perceive why this doctrine does not apply to these United States, in all cases in which there is no express constitutional or statute declaration to the contrary. . . . Subject and citizen are, in a degree, convertible terms as applied to natives, and though the term citizen seems to be appropriate to republican freemen, yet we are, equally with the inhabitants of all other countries, subjects, for we are equally bound by allegiance and subjection to the government and law of the land.”
http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/historics/USSC_CR_0169_0649_ZO.html
You will note that is not in agreement with Vattel, but neither the Supreme Court nor Kent believed Vattel was God. And in matters of citizenship, they followed the Constitution, not Vattel.