And the Same Court held that Blacks were "Separate but Equal."
So let's hear all about the wisdom and accuracy of this court, shall we? Do go on.
Posted on 05/08/2013 8:03:24 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
In one of my first essays for NRO back in 2005 (“Are You an Originalist?”), I selected the Constitution’s “natural born Citizen” criterion for eligibility to be president—a provision that then seemed at the time to be beyond the distorting effects of political bias—to illustrate that everyone intuitively recognizes the common-sense principle at the heart of the interpretive methodology of originalism: namely, that the meaning of a constitutional provision is to be determined in accordance with the meaning that it bore at the time that it was adopted. The public debate in 2008 over whether John McCain, having been born in 1936 in the Panama Canal Zone to parents who were American citizens, was a “natural born Citizen” ratified my point, as virtually all commentators purported to undertake an originalist inquiry.
I hadn’t seen any reason to comment on the left-wing “birther” attacks on Senator Ted Cruz’s eligibility to be president. Cruz was born in Canada in 1970 to a mother who was then an American citizen. Under the laws then in place, he was an American citizen by virtue of his birth.
As this Congressional Research Service report sums it up (p. 25; see also pp. 16-21), the “overwhelming evidence of historical intent, general understandings [in 18th-century America], and common law principles underlying American jurisprudence thus indicate[s] that the most reasonable interpretation of ‘natural born’ citizens would include those who are considered U.S. citizens ‘at birth’ or ‘by birth,’ … under existing federal statutory law incorporating long-standing concepts of jus sanguinis, the law of descent.” In other words, there is strong originalist material to support the semantic signal that “natural born Citizen” identifies someone who is a citizen by virtue of the circumstances of his birth—as distinguished from someone who is naturalized later in life as a citizen. (In McCain’s case, the dispute turned on whether he was indeed an American citizen by virtue of his birth—or was instead naturalized a citizen under a law enacted when he was eleven months old. For more, see law professor Gabriel Chin’s lengthy article making the case against McCain.)
To my surprise, the New Republic’s Noam Scheiber tries to argue that Cruz’s embrace of constitutional originalism somehow means that Cruz can’t determine that he is a “natural born Citizen.” But the only evidence that Scheiber offers for this position is the assertion (which Scheiber mischaracterizes as a concession) by a non-originalist law professor in an MSNBC interview that the proposition that a person is a “natural born Citizen” if he is a citizen by virtue of his birth “isn’t really clear cut if you limit yourself to the actual wording of the Constitution” (that’s Scheiber’s paraphrase) but instead depends on “how our understandings have evolved over time.” Scheiber both overlooks the powerful originalist evidence in support of Cruz’s status as a “natural born Citizen” and misunderstands how originalist methodology operates. (In public-meaning originalism, you don’t “limit yourself to the actual wording of the Constitution,” and you don’t find yourself lost simply because the Constitution “never defines what ‘natural born’ means.” You instead look to the public meaning of the term at the time it was adopted.)
My point here isn’t to contend that the originalist evidence points entirely in one direction. As law professor Michael Ramsey observes in a post that I’ve run across while finalizing this post (a post that also takes issue with Scheiber), there are originalist scholars who don’t “find the argument entirely conclusive.” But Scheiber’s piece is a cheap whack at Cruz as well as a cheap whack at originalism.
“You just can’t get over your “Expert” worship long enough to see how incompatible is English Common Law with American freedom.”
I guess that is why Scalia quoted English common law in Jones v US in 2012:
“Entickv. Carrington, 95 Eng. Rep. 807 (C. P. 1765), is a “case we have described as a ‘monument of English freedom’ ‘undoubtedly familiar’to ‘every American statesman’ at the time the Constitution was adopted, and considered to be ‘the true and ultimate expression of constitutional law’” with regard to search and seizure. Browerv. County of Inyo, 489 U. S. 593, 596 (1989) (quoting Boydv. United States, 116 U. S. 616, 626 (1886)). In that case, Lord Camden expressed in plain terms the significance of property rights in search-and-seizure analysis:
“[O]ur law holds the property of every man so sacred, that no man can set his foot upon his neighbour’s close without his leave; if he does he is a trespasser, though he does no damage at all; if he will tread upon his neighbour’s ground, he must justify it by law.” Entick, supra,at 817.”
BTW, DL - do you know what common law means?
You go on arguing that Vattel controls US citizenship. And every state, court and sane human being in the US will laugh at you. The arguments you make were made before the US Supreme Court in 1898, and thoroughly rejected.
“Under the current Constitution and federal law, those born in the U.S. to U.S. citizen parents”
And where does the constitution specify this?
“Under the current Constitution and federal law, those born in the U.S. to U.S. citizen parents”
And where does the constitution specify this? The constitution doesn’t give this distinction. This is the problem. You are reading into it something that is not there.
Those people will have to look elsewhere than you. In what part of the common law is found the principle of Independence? You know, the breaking of the subject-sovereign bond?
Where again is that Jeff?
But I repeat myself.
Like an idiot.
And the Same Court held that Blacks were "Separate but Equal."
So let's hear all about the wisdom and accuracy of this court, shall we? Do go on.
Yes, God only knows our Freedom from England is based Entirely on British Common Law, not that Swiss stuff. England has Always granted the rights of it's subject to form independent governments, and this is also why the Swiss have always been living under a Monarchy.
Pray tell Jeff, about the Glorious English law that was the basis of our Independence from England!
IDIOT
Keep up the abuse and get zotted.
Look. A lot of these issues we are going over for the 4th or 5th time here. At LEAST.
With the exact same people.
You have no answer to the facts provided that show that claims made, by you and others, are simply untrue.
And yet you keep making the same claims over and over, when they've been shown to be false.
Given that that's the case, how exactly do you think you and some of the others here who are doing this should be treated? Should we treat you as if you are great sages? Or should we treat you as if you're cranks?
I vote for cranks. Because that is what your behavior shows you to be.
You show how state law is incorporated into United States law.
You show where acts of Parliament are incorporated into United States law.
You show where English “common law” is incorporated into United States law.
YOU HAVEN’T BECAUSE YOU CAN’T - BECAUSE THEY ARE NOT.
We have gone over that 4 or 5 times. How exactly do you think you and some of the others here who are doing this should be treated?
And by the way, natural born subjects of England/Great Britain are defined by numerous acts of Parliament - NOT their “common law”
One of these things is not like the other. Plessy v.Ferguson was overturned, US v. Wong Kim Ark has not been overturned.
Geeze, you STILL can't get it right.
" all other persons born within the Republic, of parents owing allegiance to no other sovereignty, are natural born citizens."
...was present in the House when James Falconer Wilson...
Speaking of James Wilson, the Original Delegate, not his namesake, he had this to say. (Wilson's lectures on Law. 1790)
A citizen then—to draw his description as one of the people—I deem him, who acts a personal or a represented part in the legislation of his country. He has other rights; but his legislative I consider as his characteristick right. In this view, a citizen of the United States is he, who is a citizen of at least some one state in the Union: for the members of the house of representatives in the national legislature are chosen, in each state, by electors, who, in that state, have the qualifications requisite for electors of the most numerous branch of the state legislature.c In this view, a citizen of Pennsylvania is he, who has resided in the state two years; and, within that time, has paid a state or county tax: or he is between the ages of twenty one and twenty two years, and the son of a citizen.
They missed Samuel Roberts because he was insignificant as a little State legal authority and completely contradicted by far more authoritative national authorities such as Rawle and Tucker, and they missed the Pennsylvania Constitution because it had nothing to say on the matter.
Samuel Roberts merely reprinted the work of the Pennsylvania supreme court.
You simply don't want to acknowledge that fact. Here are their names:
These legal authorities effectively b*tchslap your boy Rawle. Yes, he knew these men and their work personally, but he intentionally disregarded their work, and substituted his own false ideas regarding citizenship.
The book was so popular that it had to be reprinted again in 1847. It WAS a Law-book, and was specifically intended for, and was used by, Courts of Law throughout the state of Pennsylvania.
With the exact same people.
The only difference is that *WE* keep presenting new evidence and new arguments.
That Switzerland was both the actual and philosophical model for the United States becomes more apparent the more I look at it. I had known about the history of Switzerland, how they had overthrown their monarchy and became an Independent and Free Democracy, but I never thought about the connection until one of your stupid drones started slamming the idea of Swiss principles guiding the nation.
Of COURSE Vattel would come from Switzerland. What other nation had any thinking along the lines of a Free Republic? None! The Swiss society was steeped in the notion of Freedom and Independence, so naturally they would think along these lines, where an English society would not have. In English law, separating from the King was Treason, and there was no tolerance of it.
Keep telling us that we owe our founding Principles to the English.
That it is the 1776 version of the State constitution of Pennsylvania is not the relevant part. That it was created by James Wilson and Benjamin Franklin (who signed it at the bottom) and that it specifically cites the son of a citizen (twice) as a requirement, is.
Look close. That's Benjamin Franklin's signature at the bottom. He was the President of the convention which created it. Dumb@$$.
You repeatedly post across multiple threads the same wall of text a large part of which is state law.
You KNOW state law is not relevant yet you repeatedly post it.
How exactly do you think you should be treated? Should we treat you as if you are a great sage? Or should we treat you as if you are a crank?
I vote for crank. Because that is what your behavior shows you to be.
Posting irrelevances to mislead others is lying. I vote you are also a liar. Because that is what your behavior show you to be.
Get the point? We can disagree without being disagreeable. Now keep a civil tongue in your head.
Yet.
Plessy v Ferguson p*ssed off far more people. The point still remains, if they are capable of Plessy, then whither their infallibility regarding Wong?
Wong might have even been a sop to their critics for Plessy. They certainly encountered a firestorm of criticism regarding that decision. The Wong court is now irrevocably tainted. You might as well say the Taney court rendered a decision with which you agreed.
Spin all you want. Doesn't change the fact that every single State adopted the common law rule for citizenship, that Vice Chancellor Sandford therefore reasonably concluded that that was the unwritten, American common law national rule as well, that the Supreme Court quoted Sandford approvingly and reached the same conclusion, that Alexander Hamilton told us in order to understand the terms in the Constitution, their definitions were in the English common law, or that all significant early authorities say you're full of BS.
Once again, as Chancellor Sandford explained it, there was obviously an unwritten rule for who was a citizen of the United States.
The only rule that every applied, anywhere in the United States, was the identical common law rule.
Therefore, that was the rule for the United States. It came from American common law.
As we've said many times, the United States federal government DID NOT, in general, adopt the English common law.
Doesn't change the fact that we DID adopt the common law rule for CITIZENSHIP, as affirmed repeatedly by our courts, including the US Supreme Court.
Or, if you prefer to take the alternative (Hamiltonian) view, we got our definition for "natural born," as we got our definition for every other legal term used in the Constitution, from the language of the common law.
Take your pick.
You should actually READ Lynch v. Clarke, by the way. And you should actually READ US v. Wong Kim Ark.
There is no spin. The "Our nation is based on English Principles of Law" theory collides with the reality of the fact that it was a direct contradiction of English law for us to even exist. That there was nothing like what we did anywhere in English law is also readily apparent. That the precedent and philosophy for it is only realized in Swiss experience and Principles is also non arguable.
The only reason we have been saddled with this Stupid English Feudal Land-Bondage theory is because of British Law trained Lawyers like Rawle coming after the fact and misleading people as to our birthright.
But the intent of our Federal Founders it was not.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.