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That appears to have started in 1515 by Royal Decree, and ended with the Napoleonic code in 1802.

Which is what I pointed out several posts ago. It's good you're catching up.

It doesn't greatly impact the larger point of whether or not the citizenship created by the Declaration of Independence was informed by Vattel.

Greatly impact? No. Though you still lack a direct argument.

But insofar as you and others try to paint a dichotomy between a jus soli subjecthood cast off in the Revolution and jus sanguinis citizenship informed by Vattel, it much weakens your argument. Apart from England, France is the nation best known to the Founders and Framers. Franklin was ambassador there during the War. France assisted the U.S. The nations engaged in commerce. Your repeated point about there being some profound distinction between "subject" and "citizen" is rendered all the more trivial when at the time that well-known nation of citoyens held to a jus soli rule as well.

Commensurate does not mean "equal." That one thing can be compared with another does not make them the same.

They don't need to be equal for it to be accepted the relationship to the sovereign via birth follows the same rule. It suffices they are seen as analogous, which the courts and commentators have acknowledged.

The deliberate and intentional change of the word "Subject" into "Citizen" is pointless unless one postulates an intention to change the meaning and character as well.

Or one can as well postulate that the change is driven simply by recognition of the change in government -- that "citizen" became the more precise, more appropriate term. Given that such is the view espoused by the legal commentators and SCOTUS, your simply repeating "but I can come up with another reason" gets you nowhere.

In any case, "citizen" by no means necessarily signifies jus sanguinis. See explanation above.

The root of the meaning of "natural born citizen" does not lie in 1787. It comes from an earlier time. By 1787, it appears obvious that everyone already knew what it meant, and so therefore it had already been established.

I'll agree here. Prior to 1787 there is a several hundred year usage in English of "natural born" having the meaning "having the nature or characteristic at birth." And there are documented instances between 1776 and 1787 of "nbs" and "nbc" being used in interchangeable fashion.

By contrast, I've seen no usage in English of "natural born" before 1787 meaning "from like parent(s)." Even to this day "natural born" is used as then. For example, we may speak of a person being a "natural born athlete," meaning gifted with innate athletic talent from birth. Does that signify or require that one or both parents were gifted athletes? No. They may be, but often enough they are not.

That's how English usage works.

There is nothing in the Declaration supporting English Common law.

This is stupid. The Declaration is a litany of Colonists' grievances that their common law rights were unjustly being denied.

The very document is an explicit rejection of the English Common law premise of "Divine Right", the legal and moral basis on which the Jus Soli nature of English Subjects is founded.

That "Divine Right" concept already had been tossed aside by the English when they executed Charles I. That was his argument. It failed rather spectacularly. Which means you need a better one, too.

To rebut your ignorant and stupid point that because you didn't find Vattel mentioned in the Federalist papers, he has no significance.

Strawman alert. I never said he had no significance. To the contrary. My point is that his absence from the Federalist Papers and relatively fewer references elsewhere greatly weaken your argument that Vattel was just SO preeminent that it points to him as the foundation of the Article II citizenship terms.

They all knew the Declaration created citizenship, and they were all well aware of the natural law foundation of it.

Yes, but here you're intimating the Vattel-birther conceit that "natural law foundation" means "from Vattel." This extraordinarily stupid example of selective sampling and tunnel-vision should have ended long ago.

There were MANY influential writers who discussed natural law. Burlamaqui wrote a treatise on it. And as my prior post notes, he was the first to speak of man's happiness being the end of the natural state. (Declaration, anyone?) Montesquieu wrote on natural law and natural rights. Locke wrote on it. Blackstone wrote on it. Here, chew on this one, Chief. Blackstone's View of Natural Law and Its Influence on the Formation of American Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.

You need more than just a reference to "natural law" to get clearly into Vattel territory.

You are so predictable. I knew when I did that you were going to go back and get the rest of his quote. I originally put the whole thing in there, but I told myself "Captain PounceTrifle" will ignore the larger point, and focus on that tiny bit which he will try to warp into agreement with his position."

I then thought, "Wouldn't it be cute for me to leave that out, and watch the little snake go get the rest, just so he CAN ignore the point made in my quote?" (That Justice Story specifically acknowledges you can be born in this country without being a citizen.)

You are dancing to the strings I pull, you stupid ignorant little puppet! Ha ha ha ha ha...

This whole schpiel smacks of "Methinks the DumbDumb doth protest too much." You've rarely exhibited the talent to think even one step ahead. I seriously doubt you planned this one.

In any case, this one required you to think two steps ahead. And you didn't. So your histrionics are setting the stage for your epic fail.

A reminder of how Story articulates the general common law rule:

If he was born after 4 July, 1776, and before 15 September, 1776, he was born an American citizen, whether his parents were at the time of his birth British subjects or American citizens. Nothing is better settled at the common law than the doctrine that the children even of aliens born in a country while the parents are resident there under the protection of the government and owing a temporary allegiance thereto are subjects by birth.

Story lays out that under the general common law rule, birth in the realm suffices to make one a citizen, irrespective of the citizenship (ultimate allegiance ) of the father.

Got that?

And he immediately points out that it doesn't work like that in the case of a child born in the US to British citizens.

No, DumbDumb, that is NOT what he writes. You are over-reading his words. Justice Story is a lot smarter than you, and it's not to be supposed in the next sentence he contradicts what he just said in the sentence I quoted.

If he was born after 15 September, 1776, and his parents did not elect to become members of the State of New York, but adhered to their native allegiance at the time of his birth, then he was born a British subject.

So he doesn't say "a child born in the U.S. to British parents is NOT born a citizen." Nope. Nothing that broad. He says "if the demandant was born after 15 September 1776," then he may not be a citizen.

Now why is the September 15 date significant in Story's mind? Why does the outcome on citizenship of John IngIis shift potentially at that date? I'm sure you had absolutely no clue when you first brought up this case nor even in this last reply. If you had, you wouldn't have run your mouth so as to display such ineptitude.

But I'm not going to tell you at present. Let's all see if you can figure it out yourself.

Or one can as well postulate that the change is driven simply by recognition of the change in government -- that "citizen" became the more precise, more appropriate term.

That is not your argument. Your argument is that the meaning and character is precisely the same, and that the nature of both derive from English Common Law. That there is no actual difference between them, and that it was just merely a whim to start using the term "citizen" and to eschew using the term "subject."

In other words, your argument is that between them there is a distinction without a difference.

Given that such is the view espoused by the legal commentators and SCOTUS, your simply repeating "but I can come up with another reason" gets you nowhere.

This is where you and I differ in methodology. I do not believe something merely because people unconnected to the events express an opinion. I care not what the opinions of "experts" happens to be, because I see this as the fallacy of false authority. We have seen numerous examples throughout history where the legal "experts" are just dead wrong, the latest example being "Obergefell v. Hodges".

Unless they have first hand personal knowledge regarding the events in question, or some reasonable connection to the same, their opinion is just an opinion, and may very well be wrong. I also believe that many later day "experts" deliberately steered the nature of "citizen" towards English Common law because they had an agenda, and not because it happens to be true.

In any case, "citizen" by no means necessarily signifies jus sanguinis. See explanation above.

You have not demonstrated this. There is more evidentiary support for the claim that it does than there is for the claim that it doesn't.

"Natural Born" is an adjective in this context for both "Subject" and for "Citizen", which are the nouns. The distinction in character is dependent upon the meaning of those, not on the modifier "natural born." As for interchangeability in public records, the usage of the term "citizen" does not appear to have began before 1776, where it slowly replaced the word "Subject" thereafter.

Again, the original "default" was "subject." It is foolish to believe they deliberately changed the word unless they intended to signify a change in the character described. Changing it without purpose does not make sense. Everyone was already accustomed to using the word "Subject."

This is stupid. The Declaration is a litany of Colonists' grievances that their common law rights were unjustly being denied.

And their solution to this problem was to break from the Common Law principle of perpetual allegiance to the King. To deliberately reject the "Divine Right" based principles of the Common law, chief among them being the feudal nature of land based allegiance to the liege lord. The principle that the soil ties subjects in a perpetual bond to the Lord on who's land they were born. In effect, a form of Ownership of people.

That "Divine Right" concept already had been tossed aside by the English when they executed Charles I. That was his argument. It failed rather spectacularly. Which means you need a better one, too.

Oh, didn't you hear? They put it back after Cromwell died.

Strawman alert yourself. You substitute the Constitution as the document most closely related with citizenship, when this is in fact incorrect. By 1787, the meaning was already defined. Citizenship was created by the Declaration, and *THAT* was heavily influenced by Vattel.

Yeah, except for the Fact that Thomas Jefferson's copy of Vattel is littered with notes on the Declaration in the margins. That the very notion of States forming a Republic of "perpetual union" is right out of the pages of Droit des Gens.

Burlamaqui was also Swiss, and he had a few things to say on this topic.

And this:

Locke wrote on it. Blackstone wrote on it. Here, chew on this one, Chief. Blackstone's View of Natural Law and Its Influence on the Formation of American Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.

Sure, but the most influential was Vattel.

The fourth of the Four Horsemen of American liberty is Emmerich de Vattel. Although last in this list of forgotten influences, it can be claimed, without exaggeration, that it is Vattel’s interpretations and writings on the subject of the proper constitution of government that was most influential on the Founders of the American Republic. As a matter of fact, Thomas Jefferson, indisputably one of the lead framers of our nation’s government, ranked Vattel’s seminal The Law of Nations, or the Principles of Natural Law as highly as similar treatises by Grotius and Pufendorf. Further proof of Vattel’s impression on the Founders is the fact that Vattel’s interpretations of the law of nature were cited more frequently than any other writer’s on international law in cases heard in the courts of the early United States, and The Law of Nations was the primary textbook on the subject in use in American universities.

This whole schpiel smacks of "Methinks the DumbDumb doth protest too much." You've rarely exhibited the talent to think even one step ahead. I seriously doubt you planned this one.

I will admit to usually not bothering to take you seriously. One does not normally spend a lot of time trying to out think someone whom they regard as a clown. I am actually responding to you mostly because I find many of the other topics being discussed as rather boring.

As I have mentioned before, this topic was discussed ad infinitum before you ever showed up, and the time for you to have gotten a good fight was back when the topic was fresh and I could remember where I put the salient bookmarks. If it looks like I am half-assing it, that's because I am. You just take yourself too seriously while the rest of us don't.

Story lays out that under the general common law rule, birth in the realm suffices to make one a citizen, irrespective of the citizenship (ultimate allegiance ) of the father.

Yes, and then he points out the exception which renders the "general rule" of null effect, and oddly enough it depends on the allegiance of the parents. Whoda thunk?

If he was born after 15 September, 1776, and his parents did not elect to become members of the State of New York, but adhered to their native allegiance at the time of his birth, then he was born a British subject.

Yes, a deliberate contradiction to the "general rule." Madison et al, also had these contradictions to the general rule. That is why people need to quit thinking the general rule is the only criteria.

Oh, and while we're discussing Joseph Story, I will point out that he wasn't a Delegate to the Convention, or a member of a Ratifying legislature, so I don't consider him a primary source anyways. I regard him as one of those "authorities" that deliberately tried to steer "natural born citizen" into English Common Law because he had the same agenda as others who attempted to do this.