Posted on 03/18/2023 10:56:28 PM PDT by CDR Kerchner
(Mar. 18, 2023) — The Constitution requires the president to be a “natural born citizen”. However, the term is not defined in the Constitution. Neither has a law or court ruling been made more exactly delineating the constraints of the term. The purpose of this post is not to re-hash the arguments about what “natural born citizen” means, but to outline a process that generates a legal standard for how it is enforced. The States are key to this process.
This proposal is to have one or more states enforce via legislation the implementation of the requirement in their state, according to their understanding of the requirement. If a candidate or political party sues the state, the Supreme Court will review the law and decide whether the details of the law are constitutional, according to the original intent of the framers. By this means, we can produce a general standard for the requirement that all states could adopt. ... continue reading at: https://www.thepostemail.com/2023/03/18/states-should-enforce-natural-born-citizen-requirement/
(Excerpt) Read more at thepostemail.com ...
sorry I may have misread this.
That would make children eligible, and immigrants since Independence who became citizens of a state would be grandfathered in, making their future children also eligible.”
” Which would fit with an interpretation derived from the Common Law of the time. “
BRITISH LAW?
No, Vattel’s “The Law Of Nations” would have been the standard at the time.
-PJ
In 1806, the town of New Rochelle, NY denied Paine permission to vote, declaring him a non-citizen. Despite being an early supporter of the Independency movement, the supervisor of elections was a son of locals who sided with the British during the Revolutionary War, and claimed that since Paine was imprisoned in France by Robespierre and the American ambassador did not demand his release, this meant that Paine was not a citizen of the United States.
Paine appealed to Vice-President George Clinton, who declined to reply. In his appeal, Paine lamented that the new generation doesn't remember who he was or what role he played in 1776.
You can read Paine's letters of appeal in this post of mine from 2019.
-PJ
“This was resolved with the Senate Resolution over McCain’s candidacy. The Senate defined an NBC as ‘having 2 US citizen parents at time of birth, regardless of location’ (2007?)”
Ludacris! The Senate has no authority or jurisdiction to decide who is or is not a “natural born citizen”.
John McCain was born in a FOREIGN COUNTRY! PERIOD! NOT ON US SOIL!
He was “made” by LAW, a “citizen at birth” as opposed to a “naturalized citizen”, a distinction without a real difference.
EXCEPT that means he can not be a “natural born citizen”.
BTW, McCain was born in Colón, Panama (per his birth certificate). NOT part of the “Canal Zone”. Not that it matters, The Canal Zone was NOT a “territory” or “possession” of the United States anyway. It was just a “treaty”.
The “natural born citizen” issue is VERY complicated. It requires a lot of study. Most people “THINK” they know about “citizenship” and how it works, BUT THEY DON’T!
I researched this extensively (online) (back in the day) Locating John McCain’s birth certificate from Colon Hospital. Reading the Panama Canal Treaty and SO MUCH MORE.
This NBC stuff is not simple, by any means.
The ONLY, SLAM DUNK, natural born citizens are
1. Born in the contiguous United States. (lower 48)
2. To TWO U.S. citizen parents. (by birth or naturalized, doesn’t matter)
That’s IT!
Because Alaska and Hawaii didn’t become states until 1959. Someone born there before that would fall under “territory” laws and regulations that MAY differ from state laws.
Territories and Possessions of the United States have different citizenship laws. Some of them you are not even automatically born a U.S. citizen, let alone a “natural born citizen.
This doesn’t mean that someone born in a territory or possession CAN’T be a natural born citizen, but it would require investigation, it’s not a “slam dunk”.
Puerto Rico for example. It would depend on what year you were born. In some island possessions, born on one island you are a citizen, on another you are not.
Then why did EVERY STATE adopt English Common Law at independence? Do you seriously think that the several states and the United States as a whole invented a new legal system? We simply carried over our existing laws under the new independent state governments. The entire American legal system is based on English Common Law. English cases prior to 1776 are routinely cited in American legal decisions.
The entire reason the Patriots went to war in 1775 was over violations of their rights as Englishmen.
The only person full of excrement is you.
If I remember this right the exception is Louisiana which uses the “Napoleonic Code” as common law.
“Where is Natural Born Citizen defined?”
Wong Kim Ark gave a detailed examination in 1898:
“I. The fundamental principle of the common law with regard to English nationality was birth within the allegiance—also called ‘ligealty,’ ‘obedience,’ ‘faith,’ or ‘power’—of the king. The principle embraced all persons born within the king’s allegiance, and subject to his protection. Such allegiance and protection were mutual,—as expressed in the maxim, ‘Protectio trahit subjectionem, et subjectio protectionem,’—and were not restricted to natural-born subjects and naturalized subjects, or to those who had taken an oath of allegiance; but were predicable of aliens in amity, so long as they were within the kingdom. Children, born in England, of such aliens, were therefore natural-born subjects. But the children, born within the realm, of foreign ambassadors, or the children of alien enemies, born during and within their hostile occupation of part of the king’s dominions, were not natural-born subjects, because not born within the allegiance, the obedience, or the power, or, as would be said at this day, within the jurisdiction, of the king.
10
This fundamental principle, with these qualifications or or explanations of it, was clearly. though quaintly, stated in the leading case known as ‘Calvin’s Case,’ or the ‘Case of the Postnati,’ decided in 1608, after a hearing in the exchequer chamber before the lord chancellor and all the judges of England, and reported by Lord Coke and by Lord Ellesmere. Calvin’s Case, 7 Coke, 1, 4b-6a, 18a, 18b; Ellesmere, Postnati, 62-64; s. c. 2 How. St. Tr. 559, 607, 613-617, 639, 640, 659, 679.
11
The English authorities ever since are to the like effect. Co. Litt. 8a, 128b; Lord Hale, in Harg. Law Tracts, 210, and in 1 Hale, P. C. 61, 62; 1 Bl. Comm. 366, 369, 370, 374; 4 Bl. Comm. 74, 92; Lord Kenyon, in Doe v. Jones, 4 Term R. 300, 308; Cockb. Nat. 7; Dicey, Confl. Laws, pp. 173-177, 741.
12
In Udny v. Udny (1869) L. R. 1 H. L. Sc. 441, the point decided was one of inheritance, depending upon the question whether the domicile of the father was in England or in Scotland, he being in either alternative a British subject. Lord Chancellor Hatherley said: ‘The question of naturalization and of allegiance is distinct from that of domicile.’ Page 452. Lord Westbury, in the passage rei ed on by the counsel for the United States, began by saying: ‘The law of England, and of almost all civilized countries, ascribes to each individual at his birth two distinct legal states or conditions,—one by virtue of which he becomes the subject of some particular country, binding him by the tie of natural allegiance, and which may be called his political status; another by virtue of which he has ascribed to him the character of a citizen of some particular country, and as such is possessed of certain municipal rights, and subject to certain obligations, which latter character is the civil status or condition of the individual, and may be quite different from his political status.’ And then, while maintaining that the civil status is universally governed by the single principle of domicile (domicilium), the criterion established by international law for the purpose of determining civil status, and the basis on which ‘the personal rights of the party—that is to say, the law which determines his majority or minority, his marriage, succession, testacy, or intestacy— must depend,’ he yet distinctly recognized that a man’s political status, his country (patria), and his ‘nationality,—that is, natural allegiance,’—’may depend on different laws in different countries.’ Pages 457, 460. He evidently used the word ‘citizen,’ not as equivalent to ‘subject,’ but rather to ‘inhabitant’; and had no thought of impeaching the established rule that all persons born under British dominion are natural-born subjects.
13
Lord Chief Justice Cockburn, in the same year, reviewing the whole matter, said: ‘By the common law of England, every person born within the dominions of the crown, no matter whether of English or of foreign parents, and, in the latter case, whether the parents were settled, or merely temporarily sojourning, in the country, was an English subject, save only the children of foreign ambassadors (who were excepted because their fathers carried their own nationality with them), or a child born to a foreigner during the hostile occupation of any part of the territories of England. No effect appears to have been given to descent as a source of nationality.’ Cockb. Nat. 7.
14
Mr. Dicey, in his careful and thoughtful Digest of the Law of England with Reference to the Conflict of Laws, published in 1896, states the following propositions, his principal rules being printed below in italics: “British subject’ means any person who owes permanent allegiance to the crown. ‘Permanent’ allegiance is used to distinguish the allegiance of a British subject from the allegiance of an alien, who, because he is within the British dominions, owes ‘temporary’ allegiance to the crown. ‘Natural-born British subject’ means a British subject who has become a British subject at the moment of his birth.’ ‘Subject to the exceptions hereinafter mentioned, any person who (whatever the nationality of his parents) is born within the British dominions is a natural-born British subject. This rule contains the leading principle of English law on the subject of British nationality.’ The exceptions afterwards mentioned by Mr. Dicey are only these two: ‘(1) Any person who (his father being an alien enemy) is born in a part of the British dominions, which at the time of such person’s birth is in hostile occupation, is an alien.’ ‘(2) Any person whose father (being an alien) is at the time of such person’s birth an ambassador or other diplomatic agent accredited to the crown by the sovereign of a foreign state is (though born within the British dominions) an alien.’ And he adds: ‘The exceptional and unimportant instances in which birth within the British dominions does not of itself confer British nationality are due to the fact that, though at common law nationality or allegiance in substance depended on the place of a person’s birth, it in theory at least depended, not upon the locality of a man’s birth, but upon his being born within the jurisdiction and allegiance of the king of Enl and; and it might occasionally happen that a person was born within the dominions without being born within the allegiance, or, in other words, under the protection and control of the crown.’ Dicey, Confl. Laws, pp. 173-177, 741.
15
It thus clearly appears that by the law of England for the last three centuries, beginning before the settlement of this country, and continuing to the present day, aliens, while residing in the dominions possessed by the crown of England, were within the allegiance, the obedience, the faith or loyalty, the protection, the power, and the jurisdiction of the English sovereign; and therefore 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.
16
III. 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...”
https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/169/649
Repeating for emphasis:
“It thus clearly appears that by the law of England for the last three centuries, beginning before the settlement of this country, and continuing to the present day, aliens, while residing in the dominions possessed by the crown of England, were within the allegiance, the obedience, the faith or loyalty, the protection, the power, and the jurisdiction of the English sovereign; and therefore 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 founders were familiar with the French writer Vattel who in the mid 1700s defined NBC as two citizen parents and born on native soil.”
No. He did not. He never used the term NBC. It first appeared in a bad translation AFTER the US Constitution was written.
Only for civil cases, not criminal, but yes.
source or link please
wow
If the state court overturns the state law, the legislature could pass the law again, but include a provision removing the adjudication of the law from the competence of the state court. Then the state court has no further say in the matter and the Democrats must elevate the case to federal levels. They might also try to get the fed courts to say that the legislature has no power to remove adjudication of the law from the state courts. I am not sure that would fly, in view of federalism.
Common Law? Vettel? I’m not a lawyer and don’t claim to know which precedent, if either, rules. I’m aware of seemingly well argued cases for different positions. If ever given the chance I’m optimistic Clarence Thomas could write a decision which would satisfy all camps, even though I have no idea how he’d rule. I wish I knew how to get the case to him.
The translated phrase is “Les Naturels ou indigènes font ceux qui font nés dans le pays de Parens Citoyens.” The often cited NBC translation was “The natives, or natural-born citizens, are those born in the country, of parents who are citizens”. It came in the 1797 translation. Previous translations used “The natives, or indigenes...”
Indigene is used in English, and is NOT the same as natural born citizen.
http://www.obamaconspiracy.org/2009/05/de-vattel-revisited/
FYI. This may be useful.
Shared herewith is a comment made by the author of the article being discussed here. The comment was made to commenters at his own blog named Patriot Fire at this link: https://patriot-fire.net/2023/03/06/solution-for-natural-born-citizen-requirement-for-president/
My whole point is that the there is no general standard for how the requirement should be implemented. My proposal is for states to create their own general law.
Also, that it is quite useless for non-experts to argue endlessly about this topic on the Internet. I don’t want to spend the rest of my life arguing with Internet users. I just want to make the suggestion that the states start legislating a general standard that can pass inspection by the Supreme court if it is possible to do that. It seems to me that it should be possible for states to do this.
These cases that you mention are from state courts and my guess is do not set a precedent in other states. Other states may see it differently. Neither has it been tested in the Supreme Court. Even if a state court has ruled, that doesn’t mean that the state can’t afterwards pass a law that supersedes the court ruling.
These two cases are for specific situations and do not create a general standard for who should be qualified to be President that can be applied in every state.
Ankeny v. Governor of State of Indiana
Carmon ELLIOTT, Petitioner v. Ted CRUZ, Respondent.
I am about to go on a trip, so I don’t have time to read about these two cases, closely. But my point is I shouldn’t have to. Legislatures and the courts should do the work, not me and you. Nothing is going to be resolved in this issue on the Internet. We can inform people, though, and motivate them to push their state legislators to act.”
CDR Kerchner (Ret), ProtectOurLiberty.org
FYI. This may be useful.
Shared herewith is a comment made by the author of the article being discussed here. The comment was made to commenters at his own blog named Patriot Fire at this link: https://patriot-fire.net/2023/03/06/solution-for-natural-born-citizen-requirement-for-president/
My whole point is that the there is no general standard for how the requirement should be implemented. My proposal is for states to create their own general law.
Also, that it is quite useless for non-experts to argue endlessly about this topic on the Internet. I don’t want to spend the rest of my life arguing with Internet users. I just want to make the suggestion that the states start legislating a general standard that can pass inspection by the Supreme court if it is possible to do that. It seems to me that it should be possible for states to do this.
These cases that you mention are from state courts and my guess is do not set a precedent in other states. Other states may see it differently. Neither has it been tested in the Supreme Court. Even if a state court has ruled, that doesn’t mean that the state can’t afterwards pass a law that supersedes the court ruling.
These two cases are for specific situations and do not create a general standard for who should be qualified to be President that can be applied in every state.
Ankeny v. Governor of State of Indiana
Carmon ELLIOTT, Petitioner v. Ted CRUZ, Respondent.
I am about to go on a trip, so I don’t have time to read about these two cases, closely. But my point is I shouldn’t have to. Legislatures and the courts should do the work, not me and you. Nothing is going to be resolved in this issue on the Internet. We can inform people, though, and motivate them to push their state legislators to act.”
"Permit me to hint, whether it would be wise and seasonable to provide a strong check to the admission of Foreigners into the administration of our national Government; and to declare expressly that the Commander in Chief of the American army shall not be given to nor devolve on, any but a natural born Citizen. " .....John Jay letter to George Washington dated 25 July 1787
agreed
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