Posted on 06/05/2012 5:58:56 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
In 1983, Obama naturalized as a U.S. Citizen. His Certificate of Naturalization is on file with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.
It is an argument that I have no current qualms with. It is as plausible and fits the known facts as well as anything else i've heard so far.
The Constitution does not, in words, say who shall be natural-born citizens.
In light of the fact that the court was well aware of the 14th amendment, (Which explicitly says who shall be a "citizen") I take this as an absolute acknowledgement that 14th amendment citizenship is NOT the same thing as "natural born citizenship."
If it were, the court would not have made the above statement.
See my response above. The Court explicitly stated that the 14th amendment does not define “natural born citizen”, and therefore arguments which claim that being born here is “good enough” are refuted.
You simply need more knowledge of our history and our law. It was the Cable act which first allowed women to transfer citizenship. This ability was later reinforced by the Women's citizenship act of 1934. It is only on the bases of these two statutes that women were ever allowed to transfer citizenship, and as the court noted in Rogers v Bellei, a citizen created through statute is subject to the requirements congress placed on the statute when they created it.
I would further point out that the U.S. Constitution only grants Congress the power to "naturalize". It has no other means of creating a citizen than "naturalization." Therefore all citizens created by acts of a statute, are "naturalized" citizens.
Modern courts (after Roosevelt got through screwing them up) would regard sex discrimination in law as repugnant, but it was in fact the norm for most of this nation's history. Even the Court in Minor acknowledges the legitimacy of sex discrimination in law.
Please identify the Article, Section, Clause of the Constitution which incorporates the common law of England into the Federal government of the United States.
The Constitution .... must be interpreted in the light of the common law, the principles and history of which were familiarly known to the framers of the Constitution.
The language of the Constitution, as has been well said, could not be understood without reference to the common law.
IOW, the first and most important place to look when attempting to figure out the meaning of language in the Constitution is the common law. It was the source for the legal language used when the Constitution was written.
It could hardly be otherwise. Many, perhaps most, of the Founder were attorneys who worked with the common law every day. Those who weren't attorneys had been thru a course of education of which study of the common law formed a major part. Common law legal texts were found in every gentleman's library, and were undoubtedly owned by every member of the Convention.
The issue of what is meant by the term "natural born citizen" is most definitely a matter of The language of the Constitution and can not be understood without reference to the common law.
It is certainly a much more logical place to look than a somewhat obscure book on international law by a Swiss German attorney working from an entirely separate and foreign body of law.
I suspect references in legal works and on the internet to Vattel were practically non-existent prior to Obama's run for the presidency.
It would be interesting for someone to go through all Supreme Court decisions and enumerate the number of times reference is made to common law as compared to the works of Mr. Vattel.
Birthers are ridiculed for suspecting that Obama is not a NBC, whereas if he was born abroad he presumably isn’t even a US citizen.
I asked you to identify the Article, Section, Clause of the Constitution which incorporates the common law of England into the Federal government of the United States. Could you please do so, or admit that there is not such item?
I cheerfully agree there is no such clause.
However, the Supreme Court in the Wong Kim Ark case, and no doubt in many others, specifically stated that the language of the Constitution must be interpreted in light of common law.
Since the language of the Constitution is what is at issue here, the definition of NBC, will you not agree that common law is the first and most important place to look for guidance as to the meaning of the term?
... the law of nations (wherever any question arises which is properly the object of its jurisdiction) is here adopted in its full extent by the common law ...
The jurisidiction of federal courts is defined by the Constitution. That written law does not grant to the federal judiciary the authority to incorporate other systems of law of its own chosing, does not incorporate the common law of England, nor the law or consitution of the several states.
To deny these constraints is a dangerous usurpation and a direct subversion of the fundamental principle of seperation of powers.
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