Posted on 02/16/2016 5:09:18 PM PST by SeekAndFind
RE: WHAT DID THE PHRASE NATURAL BORN MEAN WHEN THE CONSTITUTION WAS RATIFIED?
THAT my friend is the question that is quite DIFFICULT to answer since the framers ( not even James Madison ) made it a point to explain exactly what they meant by it.
Did they refer to Vattel’s understanding? Or was it Blackstone’s commentaries?
he is applying a safety factor to the reality
Or it could be as Rush Limbaugh said last Monday that internal polling shows something different and therein lies his “safety factor”.
The Supreme Court said in 1874, in Minor v Happersett that The Constitution does not say, in words, who shall be natural born citizens. Resort must be had elsewhere to determine that.
No Supreme Court ruling and no action of Congress has ever found that a person qualifying as a Citizen of the United States at Birth does not also qualify as a natural born citizen.
For more than a century now the courts and Congress have kept it exceedingly simple: if you were naturalized, you are ineligible for the presidency. If you didn’t go through a naturalization process, you are a natural born citizen. In the 19th, 20th and 21st centuries, any person who is a naturalized citizen is awarded a Certificate of Naturalization.
Naturalization occurs at some point in time AFTER birth.
The Founding Fathers’ generation made an exemption from needing naturalization in the Naturalization Act of 1790:
“the children of citizens of the United States that may be born beyond Sea, or out of the limits of the United States, shall be considered as natural born Citizens: provided, That the right of citizenship shall not descend to persons whose fathers have never been resident in the United States”.
Once again: excerpted from The Naturalization Act of 1790: “the children of citizens of the United States that may be BORN BEYOND THE SEA, or OUT OF THE LIMITS of the United States, shall be considered as NATURAL BORN CITIZENS: provided, That the right of citizenship shall not descend to persons whose fathers have never been RESIDENT in the United States”.
"No person except a natural-born citizen or a citizen of the United States at the time of the adoption of the Constitution shall be eligible to the office of President, [Footnote 7]" and that Congress shall have power "to establish a uniform rule of naturalization." Thus, new citizens may be born or they may be created by naturalization.
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. Some authorities go further and include as citizens children born within the jurisdiction without reference to the citizenship of their
Page 88 U. S. 168
parents. As to this class there have been doubts, but never as to the first. For the purposes of this case, it is not necessary to solve these doubts. It is sufficient for everything we have now to consider that all children born of citizen parents within the jurisdiction are themselves citizens. The words "all children" are certainly as comprehensive, when used in this connection, as "all persons," and if females are included in the last, they must be in the first. That they are included in the last is not denied. In fact, the whole argument of the plaintiffs proceeds upon that idea.
Under the power to adopt a uniform system of naturalization, Congress, as early as 1790, provided "that any alien, being a free white person," might be admitted as a citizen of the United States, and that the children of such persons so naturalized, dwelling within the United States, being under twenty-one years of age at the time of such naturalization, should also be considered citizens of the United States, and that the children of citizens of the United States that might be born beyond the sea, or out of the limits of the United States, should be considered as natural-born citizens. [Footnote 8] These provisions thus enacted have in substance been retained in all the naturalization laws adopted since. In 1855, however, the last provision was somewhat extended, and all persons theretofore born or thereafter to be born out of the limits of the jurisdiction of the United States, whose fathers were or should be at the time of their birth citizens of the United States were declared to be citizens also. [Footnote 9]
Notes:
1. The definition wasn't "self-evident" to those deciding the case.
2. Of those in Rubio's situation (at that time), there were doubts about their status that they didn't attempt to resolve.
3. They say that children born outside the U.S. to citizens are natural-born.
4. They recognize the role of naturalization law in clarifying who is natural-born and has no need of naturalization. (Most of those footnotes point back to specific laws which may have said "father" at the time but now say "parent.")
Vattel was an interesting political philosopher, but the founding fathers didn't make his writings a second constitution. As far as letters between Jay and Washington go, tell me what you think is pertinent in them and why.
Thanks much for your reply.
Is it your conclusion that Cruz is not a citizen?
My point was simply that it has been widely accepted by constitutional scholars that the Constitution does not define the term natural born citizen.
Minor v Happersett was a women’s suffrage appeal under the 14th Amendment and the Supreme Court opined on the exact circumstances of Virgina Minor’s natural born citizenship.
In 1874, the Supreme Court acknowledged that there were doubts about other methods of acquiring natural born citizenship. In 1898, in the high court’s decision in U.S. v Wong Kim Ark, a majority of those doubts were resolved to the satisfaction of most jurists.
Excerpted from the Supreme Court ruling in United States v. Wong Kim Ark (1898): [An alien parents] allegiance to the United States is direct and immediate, and, although but local and temporary, continuing only so long as he remains within our territory, is yet, in the words of Lord Coke in Calvins Case, [7 Coke, 6a] strong enough to make a natural subject, for, if he hath issue here, that issue is a natural-born subject.
Subject and citizen are, in a degree, convertible terms as applied to natives; and though the term citizen seems to be appropriate to republican freemen, yet we are, equally with the inhabitants of all other countries, subjects, for we are equally bound by allegiance and subjection to the government and law of the land.
every child born in England of alien parents was a natural-born subject, unless the child of an ambassador or other diplomatic agent of a foreign state, or of an alien enemy in hostile occupation of the place where the child was born.
The same rule was in force in all the English colonies upon this continent down to the time of the Declaration of Independence, and in the United States afterwards, and continued to prevail under the constitution as originally established.
As you know, that's a different question and contention from the one I replied to earlier, which was your "You're either a natural born citizen or naturalized. Cruz isn't naturalized." I was merely providing case law context that applies to that pair of contentions.
That's false.
Rogers v. Bellei, 401 U.S. 815 (1971)
Fiallo v. Bell, 430 U.S. 787 (1977)
Miller v. Albright, 523 U.S. 420 (1998)
I was replying to someone who used Minor v Happersett to defend this statement: “One is NATURALLY a US citizen when one cannot possibly be anything else. Born here of citizen parents. Natural born citizen.”
I told him I see that contradicted in that decision.
Thanks for your reply; I was looking for how your thinking applied to Cruz.
I think you are saying that someone can be a citizen from birth, not naturalized or a citizen from birth and naturalized. There would then be a third category: naturalized after birth.
I think you are still ending up with a *category* of citizenship that does not exist. There’s not born citizen and born naturalized citizen.
However, there are two *ways” a person can be born a citizen. From my previous link:
A person may derive citizenship from birth in one of two ways:
1. Birth in the United States
2. Birth outside the United States to a U.S. citizen parent(s)
But in either case they are born citizens - not requiring a naturalization process at a later time.
The constitution gives congress the power to establish an uniform Rule of Naturalization. This has always applied to those who are *not* citizens by birth - who do not need to be naturalized. So the idea of a citzen who is “naturalized at birth” is a non sequitur.
Thanks again for your reply.
Those appeals did not involve the right to run for or assume the office of president.
Miller v Albright was about a child born out of wedlock.
A law providing narrower standards for United States citizenship for a child born abroad out of wedlock to an American father, as opposed to an American mother, was justified by important government interests and did not violate the equal protection guarantee of the Fifth Amendment.
Rogers v Bellei dealt with special residency rules imposed by Congress on a person born ouside the U.S. Those rules were repealed in 1978.
Congress has the power to impose the condition subsequent of residence in this country on appellee, who does not come within the Fourteenth Amendment’s definition of citizens as those “born or naturalized in the United States,” and its imposition is not unreasonable, arbitrary, or unlawful.
And Fiallo v Bell was another immigration by children born out of wedlock appeal when one parent is a U.S. citizen.
There are lawsuits that have been filed that directly challenge Senator Cruz and Senator Rubio as to their right to run for president. We’ll have to wait and see how those lawsuits and appeals are adjudicated, but the Illinois Board of Elections has already ruled that Senator Cruz is eligible:
http://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/presidential-races/268043-illinois-board-of-elections-rules-cruz-eligible-for
.
The Constitution likewise neglects to define any word in the Constitution. President is not defined. Congress is not defined either, but we know what those words mean. If Congress decided tomorrow to define president as a three-legged mule what would the effect be? Nothing, of course, because Congress DOES NOT HAVE THE AUTHORITY TO REDEFINE WORDS IN THE CONSTITUTION.
In our discussion, you are the one creating a third category of citizenship.
Not to says SCOTUS never has created a third category, it divided the class of naturalized into "naturalized in the US" (in the 14th amendment), and "naturalized, but NOT naturalized in the US." That division of naturalized citizens doesn't make one part of them "not naturalized."
I know of no case law that supports the division of citizenship that you claim applies. I may have overlooked your source of authority, but in just reviewing our exchange on this thread, I see no "previous link" that points to a primary authority on the question.
I thought it was the recent poll numbers but I think I just figured out why Cruz is in meltdown mode...
Gov. Haley will be endorsing Rubio tonight.
Once again, Congress cannot change the definitions of words without amending the Constitution. Do you want them to define the word firearms as pimento cheese? According to you, they can do just that.
The words in the WKA decision are pretty clear. You have misrepresented what those words say, with this summary.
Not directly, but if any of those persons had run for the office, the case would apply, directly, to them. The fact pattern of the Bellei case, at least, can be used to analyze the source of citizenship that attached to Bellei, and his birth circumstances are very close to Cruz's. But what I replied to was this, by you:
-- No Supreme Court ruling and no action of Congress has ever found that a person qualifying as a Citizen of the United States at Birth does not also qualify as a natural born citizen. --
The Supreme Court ruling in Rogers v. Bellei found that a person qualifying as a Citizen of the United States at Birth [Bellei] is a naturalized citizen. That disproves your contention, unless you assert that a natural born citizen and a naturalized citizen are the same thing.
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