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To: Ha Ha Thats Very Logical
I can't answer that because I don't understand what you're asking.

That 1st statement says it all. You have no clue as to how to interpret the words in the Constitution. SCOTUS Justice Joseph Story can help you with this ignorance problem you have...

§ 181. I. The first and fundamental rule in the interpretation of all instruments is, to construe them according to the sense of the terms, and the intention of the parties. Mr. Justice Blackstone has remarked, that the intention of a law is to be gathered from the words, the context, the subject-matter, the effects and consequence, or the reason and spirit of the law...a rule of equal importance is, not to enlarge the construction of a given power beyond the fair scope of its terms, merely because the restriction is inconvenient, impolitic, or even mischievous. ..every word employed in the constitution is to be expounded in its plain, obvious, and common sense, unless the context furnishes some ground to control, qualify, or enlarge it. Constitutions are not designed for metaphysical or logical subtleties, for niceties of expression, for critical propriety, for elaborate shades of meaning, or for the exercise of philosophical acuteness, or juridical research. They are instruments of a practical nature, founded on the common business of human life, adapted to common wants, designed for common use, and fitted for common understandings. The people make them; the people adopt them; the people must be supposed to read them, with the help of common sense; and cannot be presumed to admit in them any recondite meaning, or any extraordinary gloss...read the entire section of Story's interpreting the Constitution here:

http://www.belcherfoundation.org/joseph_story_on_rules_of_constitutional_interpretation.htm

998 posted on 10/18/2010 2:11:30 PM PDT by patlin (Ignorance is Bliss for those who choose to wear rose colored glasses)
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To: patlin
> I can't answer that because I don't understand what you're asking.

That 1st statement says it all.

Your first statement said, "We are defining the 'ROOT' meaning here, not the function of the term. Do you not agree that there is a 'FUNCTION' to the term." So first you say we're not talking about the function, then you ask me about the function. That's confusing--it has nothing to do with my ability to interpret the Constitution.

And I don't know what you want me to get from Story. I see nothing in there about the root of a word, or its etymology, or its history. I see a lot about considering a term in context. And I see, in one of the bits you elided, where he quotes Blackstone in saying that illustrations of a word's meaning "may be further derived from the subject-matter, with reference to which the expressions are used." Where else is the term "natural-born X" used? Why, in English common law. It sounds like Blackstone would think that was an obvious place to look, then, for what "natural born citizen" could mean.

And one place the phrase was not used was in Vattel, whether in French or in the translations available at the time the Constitution was written. In other words, later translations used "natural born citizens" because the phrase was already used in the Constitution, not the other way around.

1,026 posted on 10/18/2010 4:54:29 PM PDT by Ha Ha Thats Very Logical
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