Replies

I will inform you once again that there is no statute.

I will take your word for that.

The term natural born citizen does not define itself for me. I feel comfortable performing my responsibilities as a citizen without ever being certain about what definition(s) the Founders would have given to the term. If I saw evidence that clearly indicated that most of them consciously agreed to a more specific definition than what they provided in the Constitution, I would be inclined to abide by it. But, nothing that I have read from people who have taken various positions on the matter has been overwhelmingly persuasive.

What I see is uncertainty. Clearly, they wanted there to be a significant connection between a president and this country, but I am not convinced that they wanted a list of detailed requirements that would serve only to arbitrarily exclude a lot of very good candidates.

I think that the problem more or less takes care of itself in that I have never seen any evidence that anyone dangerously foreign to this country could ever get himself elected president. And, yet, the phrase is in the Constitution and so it deserves our respect. My personal answer to that problem is to treat the term as meaning that the candidate must be a citizen at birth. That covers at least two of the words - born and citizen. I wish that I could do more. ;-)

The term natural born citizen does not define itself for me.

That is because you haven't spent sufficient time contemplating the various iterations in which it does.

Suppose someone is in orbit when they are born, flying over this and that land willy nilly. How do you know what land they happen to be over when they are counted as "born"?

The only knowable thing about a child, of which no other circumstances of birth are known is it's parentage. You can know this because it can be established with positive proof through DNA testing.

What is the natural means of determining a child's national character? Well, by establishing who is the father, and determining what is his National character.

You can't always prove where a child is born, but you can certainly prove who the child's parents are.

But let us see what an early philosopher of Natural Law (Aristotle) had to say on the subject.

But the citizen whom we are seeking to define is a citizen in the strictest sense, against whom no such exception can be taken, and his special characteristic is that he shares in the administration of justice, and in offices.
...
But in practice a citizen is defined to be one of whom both the parents are citizens;

There is a lot of wisdom at the other end of that link.

The term natural born citizen does not define itself for me.

I would also like to acquaint you with Thomas Jefferson's opinion of Natural Law.

"Our Revolution commenced on more favorable ground. It presented us an album on which we were free to write what we pleased. We had no occasion to search into musty records, to hunt up royal parchments, or to investigate the laws and institutions of a semi-barbarous ancestry. We appealed to those of nature, and found them engraved on our hearts. Yet we did not avail ourselves of all the advantages of our position. We had never been permitted to exercise self-government. When forced to assume it, we were novices in its science. Its principles and forms had entered little into our former education."