If they took the case and examined the theory that Vattel’s concept of what it is to be a “natural born citizen” would they not have to examine the framers’ intention in choosing the phrase?
Would, should, could. There are 2 encompassing protocols for determining original intent, the meaning that even the lowliest uneducated lay person could understand and also the intent of those that wrote the law. Every justice on the SCOTUS knows this, but right do we peons have to insist that they actually follow it? Every right according to Story. Joseph Story:
§ 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...if a literal meaning would involve a manifest absurdity, it ought not to be adopted; and that the reason and spirit of the law, or the causes, which led to its enactment, are often the best exponents of the words, and limit their application...§ 210. XV. In the first place, then, 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.
Minor v Hapersett:
The Constitution does not, in words, say who shall be natural-born citizens. Resort must be had elsewhere to ascertain that. At common-law, with the nomenclature of which the framers of the Constitution were familiar, it was never doubted that all children born in a country of parents who were its citizens became themselves, upon their birth, citizens also. These were natives, or natural-born citizens, as distinguished from aliens or foreigners.
John Bingham, framer of the 14th(39th Congress):
I find no fault with the introductory clause [S 61 Bill], which is simply declaratory of what is written in the Constitution, that every human being born within the jurisdiction of the United States of parents not owing allegiance to any foreign sovereignty is, in the language of your Constitution itself, a natural born citizen
Now take a look at the words of Vattel:
Book One, Chapter 19 § 212. Citizens and natives
The citizens are the members of the civil society; bound to this society by certain duties, and subject to its authority, they equally participate in its advantages. The natives, or natural-born citizens, are those born in the country, of parents who are citizens.
English common law prior to the Calvin case(1608). Clark's (Oxford, England) Discourse on political & social dynamics: “In the Savoy”, 1738; “State Trials, Vol 2”, London 1809 & Clive Perry, “British Nationality”, London 1951
“English nationality was acquired, indelibly, by birth within the realm to parents who were themselves subjects”
The mistake many make is thinking that feudal law subjectship is the same as common law of nature passed down & unchanged from the time of Adam & Eve. Feudal law is postive law(Jura Coronae) implemented at the perogative of a oligarchical king. The US never adopted any form of feudal law. St. George Tucker (from his works: Tucker's Blackstone)
by the rejection of the sovereignty of the crown of England, not only all the laws of that country by which the dependence of the colonies was secured, but the whole lex prerogativa (or Jura Coronae before mentioned) so far as respected the person of the sovereign and his prerogatives as an individual, was utterly abolished: and, that so far as respected the kingly office, and government, it was either modified, abridged, or annulled...that every rule of the common law, and every statute of England, founded on the nature of regal government, in derogation of the natural and unalienable rights of mankind; or, inconsistent with the nature and principles of democratic governments, were absolutely abrogated, repealed, and annulled, by the establishment of such a form of government in the states, respectively