Replies

So what is your point?

To correct a mistake made with respect to whether anyone has implied that the Founders used Vattel's exact words.

In fact, the whole "Vattel's doctrine was adopted by the Founders" theory came from the (alleged, but inaccurate) Jay-Vattel connection. This was the KEY to the theory. If there is no Jay-Vattel connection, then there is no direct connection between Vattel's theory and the Founders.

Sure, one can say that the Founders read Vattel's work. The Founders read Blackstone's work too. But without the Jay-Vattel connection, there's no evidence that the Founders placed more reliance on Vattel's discussion of non-British law than they did on Vattel's statement regarding British law, or Blackstone's extensive discussion of British law.

In other words, without the Jay-Vattel connection, the whole foundation upon which the theory that the Founders opted for Vattel over Blackstone is based - disappears. So those seeking to make that argument need to build a new foundation for that theory.

The Constitution is our Document, and history is history.
Agreed.

Adhere to the Constitution.
Agreed.

People really need to calm down about this. The Constitution, as written, does not specify any details as to what makes one a natural born citizen. Placing ones own interpretation atop that does not make one a more faithful defender of the Constitution than anyone else.

Whatever Vatel said or didn't say, meant or didn't mean, is not determinative. Believe with all your heart and soul that the elite select of natural born citizens simply must have a citizen father. Fine. The fact remaining on the table is this—everyone knew Obama didn't have a citizen father when he was a candidate. This country let him run, and he won a clear majority of the votes cast. Any reasonable person who who has spent any time in the legal profession knows there is absolutely zero chance that a court, Supreme or otherwise, will overturn that based on a new and novel interpretation of a phrase that most people have always accepted (with ample common law precedent) as meaning simply “born here.”

If you can prove he wasn't born here, great. Run with it. But this citizen father stuff is an obvious nonstarter. And saying that doesn't make one a RINO, an Obot or a troll. It makes one conservative in the truest and most meaningful sense of the word—facing and accepting reality.

The only thing of any importance is what SCOTUS determines what the Constitution says means.

All Presidents subsequent to Andrew Jackson were born within the United States of America and after the Declaration of Independence. The principal issue with regard to the qualifications stipulated by ART. II, Sec. 1, Clause 5 is whether a child born abroad of American parents is "a natural born citizen" in the sense of the clause, or not. It is clear that such a child is a citizen as a consequence of statute. ¹ Whatever the term "natural born" means, it no doubt does not include a person who is naturalized. Thus, the answer to the question might be seen to turn on the interpretation of the first sentence of the first section of the Fourteenth Amendment, providing that ‘‘[a]ll persons born or naturalized in the United States’’ are citizens. ² Significantly, however, Congress, in which a number of Framers sat, provided in the Naturalization act of 1790 that "the children of citizens of the United States, that may be born beyond the sea, . . . shall be considered as natural born citizens . . . ."³ This phrasing followed the literal terms of British statutes, beginning in 1350, under which persons born abroad, whose parents were both British subjects, would enjoy the same rights of inheritance as those born in England; beginning with laws in 1709 and 1731, these statutes expressly provided that such persons were natural-born subjects of the crown. ⁴ There is reason to believe, therefore, that the phrase includes persons who become citizens at birth by statute because of their status in being born abroad of American citizens.⁵ Whether the Supreme Court would decide the issue should it ever arise in a case or controversy — as well as how it might decide it — can only be speculated about.

Source:
Analysis and Interpretation of the Constitution,
Annotations of Cases Decided by the Supreme Court of the United States
Senate Document No. 108-17, 2002 Edition: Cases Decided to June 28, 2002

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Notes:

1) 8 U.S.C. § 1401.

2) Reliance on the provision of an Amendment adopted subsequent to the constitutional provision being interpreted is not precluded by but is strongly militated against by the language in Freytag v. Commissioner, 501 U.S. 868, 886-887 (1991), in which the Court declined to be bound by the language of the 25th Amendment in determining the meaning of ‘‘Heads of Departments’’ in the appointments clause (see also id. at 917 - Justice Scalia concurring). If the Fourteenth Amendment is relevant and the language is exclusive, that is, if it describes the only means by which persons can become citizens, then, anyone born outside the United States would have to be considered naturalized in order to be a citizen, and a child born abroad of American parents is to be considered ‘‘naturalized’’ by being statutorily made a citizen at birth. Although dictum in certain cases supports this exclusive interpretation of the Fourteenth Amendment, United States v. Wong Kim Ark, 169 U.S. 649, 702-703 (1898); cf. Montana v. Kennedy, 366 U.S. 308, 312 (1961), the most recent case in its holding and language rejects it. Rogers v. Bellei, 401 U.S. 815 (1971).

3) Act of March 26, 1790, 1 Stat. 103, 104 (emphasis supplied). See Weedin v. Chin Bow, 274 U.S. 657, 661-666 (1927); United States v. Wong Kim Ark, 169 U.S. 649, 672-675 (1898). With minor variations, this language remained law in subsequent reenactments until an 1802 Act, which omitted the italicized words for reasons not discernable. See Act of Feb. 10, 1855, 10 Stat. 604 (enacting same provision, for offspring of American-citizen fathers, but omitting the italicized phrase).

4) 25 Edw. 3, Stat. 2 (1350); 7 Anne, ch. 5, § 3 (1709); 4 Geo. 2, ch. 21 (1731).

5) See, e.g., Gordon, Who Can Be President of the United States: The Unresolved Enigma, 28 MD. L. REV. 1 (1968).