The WKA decision interprets the US Constitution’s meaning of natural born citizen. They echo, poorly, the reasoning used in the NY case I cited.
NBC was the Americanized term for the British natural born subject. When the colonies were free, the new states revised their law - prior to the Constitution - to change the wording NBS into NBC...so it is pretty reasonable to believe a natural born citizen is anyone who would have met the definition for natural born subject used prior to the Revolution.
And it is also reasonable to assume the lawyers writing the Constitution had THIS in mind when they put that phrase into the Constitution.
WKA: http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/historics/USSC_CR_0169_0649_ZO.html
Lynch: http://tesibria.typepad.com/whats_your_evidence/Lynch_v_Clarke_1844_ocr.pdf
It is highly illogical to assume they had in mind a poor translation of Vattel made 10 years AFTER the Constitution.
In spite of what they had in mind when the wrote it, the framers knew that they did not define it clearly.
Hence they gave that authority to define it, to a future Congress, under article 1 section 8 clause 4 of the Constitution.
The laws of the U.S. did not end w/the Constitution. They began with it. Subsequent Congresses have the authority to expand it, which is where we get the the US Code.
Regardless of what quotes can be dug up out of US Supreme Court decisions, none of those decisions has overturned the constitutionality of Title 8 USC 1401.
Secondly, it is logically and historically IMPOSSIBLE to apply the British definition of 'natural born subject' to the American context. Citizens and subjects are totally different. The model and theory of government are vastly different. A Constitutional republic is not a Parliamentary monarchy.
George D. Collins, Esq. was the Secretary of the California Bar Association. His name was recognized nationally for cases in the federal courts. In 1884, he published an article in The American Law Review entitled ARE PERSONS BORN IN THE UNITED STATES IPSO FACTO CITIZENS THEREOF? [<=click on link to read]. In the article, he addresses the legal definitions of US citizenship—including the definition of natural born citizenship. He totally destroys every claim you and the other Obama apologists make.
Attorney Collins establishes clearly that there is no national common law in the United States—each State started its own common law tradition, which incorporated British common law at the time the colony was founded, but which evolved independently from British common law, and independently from that of the other colonies (and then States, after independence.) Which is why it's IMPOSSIBLE for the US to have its own national common law. He cites the Supreme Court cases that say exactly that.
He also explains that natural born citizens are in no way, shape or form, the same as natural born subjects, and why that MUST be so.
Core of the argument: The English common law did not distinguish between a “natural born subject” and a naturalized subject. "The English common law provided that an alien naturalized is “to all intents and purposes a natural born subject.” Co. Litt. 129 (quoted and cited in United States v. Rhodes, 27 F.Cass. 785, 790 (1866).). Under English common law, once a person became naturalized, he or she was deemed to be a “natural born subject.” Hence, under English common law a naturalized citizen was considered a “natural born subject.” Hence, giving the “natural born Citizen” clause the same meaning as a “natural born subject” would have allowed a naturalized citizen to be eligible to be President of the new Republic.
Attorney Collins discusses Vattel in great detail. And Collins agrees that to be a natural born citizen one must be born on the soil of parents who were themselves citizens. Collins quotes Vattell.
But more important is the fact that Collins makes it clear Vattel’s definition of “natural born citizen” was not actually Vattel’s definition. Vattel merely codified the pre-existing law of nations. He acted as a lexicographer of existing concepts and terms, not as a policymaker coining new ones.
This is very important.
The definition of “natural born citizen” was not created by Vattel in his treatise, “Law of Nations.” That treatise simply discussed the established body of law known as “the law of nations”. The definition of natural born citizen discussed in Vattel’s treatise was actually the definition established by the body of law known as “law of nations”.