Do you have a good reference for this — was it before the
signing of the Constitution or when he was Chief Justice?
“Do you have a good reference for this — was it before the
signing of the Constitution or when he was Chief Justice?”
BP2:
My recollection of what John Jay said was not as precise as I stated, but is still correct (reflects the Constitutional definition of NBC) if you accept John Bingham's definition, which I do.
According to John Bingham (see quote and link below) a person cannot be a natural born citizen if the parents are “owing allegiance to any foreign sovereignty.” The clear point is that the child, if they became commander in chief, must not owe legal allegiance to more than one sovereignty. A bastard child does not owe allegiance to the country of his foreign father. This is not a question of the bastard child volunteering allegiance to the country of his father, but of whether another sovereignty claims that allegiance is owed by the child.
Legal citizenship of wives and children at the time of the founders and up until very recently followed the legal husband. Under the BNA of 1948, the UK did not claim that the children of bigamous marriages or bastard children owed it allegiance and did not recognize a claim of UK citizenship unless the child was subsequently “legitimated” (and we have no evidence of that for BHO II).
Bottom line: BHO II, if he is the the bastard child of a bigamous marriage, does not “owe allegiance to any foreign sovereignty” and owes allegiance only to the country with sovereignty over his mother, the US.
True, Jay only said he wanted to exclude “foreigners” from being Commander in Chief.
From Wiki on John Jay writing to Washington:
The origin of the natural-born citizen clause can be traced to a July 25, 1787, letter from John Jay to George Washington, presiding officer of the Constitutional Convention. John Jay wrote: “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.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Hutcher/Natural-born_citizen
From Federalist Blog quoting Bingham on “not owing allegiance to any foreign sovereignty”:
Framer of the Fourteenth Amendments first section, John Bingham, said Sec. 1992 of U.S. Revised Statutes meant “every human being born within the jurisdiction of the United States of parents not owing allegiance to any foreign sovereignty is, in the language of your Constitution itself, a natural born citizen.”
http://federalistblog.us/2007/09/revisiting_subject_to_the_jurisdiction.html