Posted on 08/19/2015 12:45:52 PM PDT by BuckeyeTexan
The 1866 Act drew the line by excluding persons “subject to any foreign power,”
Which is synonymous with "subject to the jurisdiction thereof" written in the 14th Amendment.
This is not true. What the author misses is that there are certain people who really aren't subject to the law of the land, and it's these people who the "subject to the jurisdiction" phrase is meant to address.
Those people are diplomats and occupying soldiers. Diplomats with immunity are not subject to US law, occupying soldiers operate under the laws of war and are not subject to civil laws. Use of the "subject to the jurisdiction" phrase is identifying these people, saying their children will not be citizens. There is no contradiction.
This construct was not new. At the time of adoption of the 14th this was the traditional way it worked. We inherited our rules from England, which operated the same way. The 14th only codified it in the Constitution to make it explicit with regard to ex-slaves. England did not change birthright citizenship until 1983.
Is this the same Mark Levin that was mocking us "birthers" for our "natural born citizen" arguments relating to Obama?
Took him long enough to catch up with us.
Ping to another person who is recognizing the damage being caused by the 14th amendment.
Oh, and Tau Food, I told you I started looking at the societal damage first, and that this was how I was led back to the 14th amendment and the Civil War.
To be honest, I don’t really care what the rest of the world does. When we do the right thing, the world generally follows anyway, but even if they don’t we are free to go our own way. But the rest of the world usually follows.
Our guide for federal action should as it always should be, the Constitution as written and originally understood and intended and court cases that have applied in good faith the Constitution.
If it is still unclear, then the Constitution does clearly say that Congress has the power to uniformly set laws for naturalization (Art I,Sec 8,C l4). No need for a Constitutional amendment as I see it, just Congress deciding how to handle this issue.
We explicitly did NOT inherit our rules from England. We explicitly eschewed English Subject law in recognizing the condition of US Citizenship.
It's just that many Lawyers (such as William Rawle) Deliberately misled the public on this score in the early 19th century, and the consequences of their deliberately misleading the public have informed subsequent lawmakers in erroneous thinking.
The Claim that we followed English law was a tactic used by the early abolitionists to get slaves declared as citizens, and this is why they were deliberately misleading everyone regarding the condition of US Citizenship. (William Rawle was the President of the Pennsylvania Abolition society.)
This is why the Supreme Court said in Minor v Happersett that:
At common-law, with the nomenclature of which the framers of the Constitution were familiar, it was never doubted that all children born in a country of parents who were its citizens became themselves, upon their birth, citizens also. These were natives, or natural-born citizens, as distinguished from aliens or foreigners. Some authorities go further and include as citizens children born within the jurisdiction without reference to the citizenship of their parents. As to this class there have been doubts, but never as to the first.
These people pushing the English Law claims were those "Some authorities" which went "further". They were doing it in a good cause, but they were still lying about it, at least the original ones were.
Well, this background primer is much more than a global comparison. That’s an inadequate title. The article provides a significant amount of information about both “sides” of the debate. I encourage you to read it as time allows.
Levin destroys the claim that the Fourteenth Amendment mandates birthright citizenship.
Which is the Siamese twin of the Obama legitimacy issue, which he has explicitly rejected constantly for the last 7 years.
Well, thanks for posting it and I did skim through it. I was addressing the statements made at the conclusion.
I get that you are a birther and have to have a different opinion, but when other people don’t agree with you that doesn’t mean they were or are lying.
Levin makes the same mistake I outlined earlier.
No, it generally means they don't know what they are talking about. Not the same thing as lying, but it generally has the same effect of misinforming other people.
Now it occurs to me that a more sensible man would have said "Where's your proof?" But I see you have just dismissed the point out of hand, which is just as well. I didn't want to wade through all my bookmarks on this topic anyways.
Wow...wow. Mark Levin just redeemed himself entirely. He had on a guest speaker that downed the leftist’s canard of common law. Mark said those who want children of aliens to be citizens need to amend the Constitution....not the other way around.
I thought he had you on for a minute there ;)
This is a lie on the part of the author. Most of "these advocates" agree that diplomats and at the time members of the soverign Indian nations weren't fully subject to the jurisdiction of the US. When you can't even discuss the other side's arguments honestly it means you're lame.
Completely with Dr. Erler.
I heard it. It was a great interview.
Destroyed the nonsense. Based in feudalism allegiance to a king forever. We threw that yoke off way back when after 2 wars, and the Declaration of Independence.
Or, as Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson put it in 1949, "The Constitution is not a suicide pact."
"Birthright citizenry" may be de facto law in the minds of many legal scholars, on the basis of a very superficial reading of the Fourteen Amendment, and Supreme Court rulings based on such a superficial reading. But that doesn't necessarily make it de jure law....
It's 'way past time for Congress to clarify this situation, or risk the destruction of our nation and way of life.
Strong leadership in the Executive may be essential in this regard.
I’m trying to approach this from a literalist point of view to arrive at the “birthright advocates’” position on the ‘subject to the jurisdiction thereof’ question. Even being literalist, it is still a toss-up. It isn’t a matter of ‘subject-hood’ that one gets stopped for going 60 in a 35 mph zone.
So, we’re left with some kind of originalist approach that actually looks into the history, language, intent, etc. of the Congress, states, and times that brought us the 14th.
It is at that level that ‘birthright citizenship’ fails the test. If ‘rationality’ is applied, then that could be said to be using a ‘living constitution’ approach, but I don’t think looking at the rationality of the authors is anything but pure originalism.
Thus, your comment about a ‘suicide pact’ is relevant now because it would have been relevant then.
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.