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To: centurion316
The meaning of the word "exclude" is quite clear. He is in fact describing the founding concern about someone coming here, say an Englishman, siring a child without acquiring citizenship and then leaving, the well known "dual allegiance" that so concerned Washington and Jay, among others. Further, he is discussing the matter in the context of citizenship under the Fourteenth Amendment in the case before him, not in the context of the use of the phrase in Article II, Section 1, Clause 5. It is true that the child of such an alien, non-citizen father might be a citizen (and thus would be so by virtue of jus soli but what Scalia clearly says is that the Framers would have been concerned that the child was not natural born as in the qualification for President. You are misrepresenting and misunderstanding what he is saying.

It would be jus soli for such a child of an alien father to be a citizen but not for him to be eligible to be President. There the Framer's concern that Scalia mentions would be controlling if their intent were analyzed by virtue of what Scalia himself is saying what their concern was. Scalia would agree with what St. George Tucker explained in his comments about the Constitutional provision at the end of his Blackstone of 1804.

There are clearly those, like Judge Robertson, who don't care about the issue because of their bias, but it would appear that Scalia is not among them, at least from the comment you cite and might well actually apply the law as intended in the Constitution.

373 posted on 12/04/2010 10:47:31 PM PST by AmericanVictory (Should we be more like them or they more like we used to be?)
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To: AmericanVictory

I take your point, but that is the entire issue, isn’t it? To what extent did the 14th Amendment affect the original language and framers’ intent? I don’t think that the courts want to resolve the issue and the politicians don’t want to touch it with a ten foot pole.


378 posted on 12/05/2010 6:19:08 AM PST by centurion316
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