The "Law of Nations" reference is of particular interest, because that exact treatise is mentioned in our own Constitution. Article I, Section 8, Clause 10:
"To define and punish piracies and felonies committed on the high seas, and offenses against the law of nations;"
Another Freeper brought this clause and The Law of Nations to my attention recently, and your post jogged my memory of it. I believe that she also had mentioned it in reference to the NBC issue.
If I'm reading the Constitution correctly, it says that Congress has the power to punish offenses committed against The Law of Nations, of which the statement regarding the Natural Born Citizen is a part.
I don't know that the Supreme Court will interpret it that way, but I would suspect that they would at least consult The Law of Nations as a reference in clarifying this.
“The ‘Law of Nations’ reference is of particular interest, because that exact treatise is mentioned in our own Constitution. Article I, Section 8, Clause 10:
‘To define and punish piracies and felonies committed on the high seas, and offenses against the law of nations;’”
Are you serious? The phrase “the law of nations” is not unique to the title of Vatell’s book. It has long been in general usage, which is probably why Vatell picked it in the first place (they didn’t have very clever titles back then). Roughly, the phrase refers to a code recognized by the common consent of nations, like an unofficial international law. What exactly constitutes offenses against “the law of nations” I cannot say with much accuracy, but I guess that’s why the Constitution leaves it up to Congress to define and punish them.
Anyway, there is no chance the Framers intentionally singled out Vatell’s book. Why on earth would they have burried the definition of a natural born citizen inside an old book within a clause about pirates, of all things? To do so would be lunacy. There could be hundreds, even thousand of principles postulated in Vatell’s book. Are you seriously arguing that all of them are Constitutional law because the words “the law of nations” appear somewhere in the Constitution’s text?
“If I’m reading the Constitution correctly, it says that Congress has the power to punish offenses committed against The Law of Nations, of which the statement regarding the Natural Born Citizen is a part”
What would it mean for Congress to punish an offense committed against Vatell’s definition of a natural born citizen? That doesn’t make any sense.