There really is no idea of what we mean by "citizen" in British common law. Any person born within the realm of the King was a subject of the British Crown. I wanted to address this point also. Over my years of researching this issue, I had a sudden realization which I think is true, but of which I am not completely certain.
It is regarding the usage of the word "citizen." It is well known now that when Thomas Jefferson was writing the Declaration of Independence (The document which actually created American Citizens) he originally wrote down the word "Subject", and then erased it, and then replacing it with the word "Citizen."
From what I can determine, the word "Citizen" at this time was seldom used, and generally referred to the inhabitants of a city. I note that in all the works of Shakespeare in which it is used, it refers to the inhabitants of a city. I also note that in Blackstone, the word also refers to the inhabitants of a city.
Why would Jefferson not use the word "Subject"? That was a commonly used English word, and everyone understood what it meant. There was no need to replace it with the word "Citizen" unless there was something distinctly different about the status of a "citizen" versus that of a "Subject".
Many people of today would have you believe they were intended to be used interchangeably and that they follow the same legal principles. But the fact that the word was deliberately changed implies that there was some other influence on Jefferson which led him to believe the two words did not have the same meaning, and likewise there was some influence on him to use the word to describe the members of a Nation rather than just the inhabitants of a City.
I believe that Jefferson chose that word because it had been made popular by the writings of Emmerich Vattel.
Les citoyens sont les membres de la societe civile : lies a cette societe par certains devoirs et soumis a son autorite, ils participent avec egalite a ses avantages. Les naturels, ou indigenes, sont ceux qui sont nes dans le pays, de parens citoyens.
"Citizen" was the word Vattel used to describe the members of a Republic that gained it's independence from a Monarchy. Indeed, Vattel seems to be the only writer of that entire era that claimed people had a natural right to declare independence from a Monarchy, and govern themselves.
This is understandable because he is the only widely read writer of that time that did not live under a Monarchy. A King of any country would have considered the notion that you can throw off his rule and form your own government as treasonous and seditious, and so no writer who lived in a Kingdom would dare write such a thing.
Vattel lived in the Swiss Republic. They hadn't had a King for 468 years.
To sum up my point, it is the very substitution of the word "Citizen" for "Subject" that points to it's origin. "Citizen" is the word Vattel used, and since Vattel was Jefferson's influence in writing the Declaration of Independence, Vattel's meaning is therefore implicit in the usage of the word "citizen."
Had we intended to follow English Common law, the word we would be using would be "Subject."
It is regarding the usage of the word "citizen." It is well known now that when Thomas Jefferson was writing the Declaration of Independence (The document which actually created American Citizens) he originally wrote down the word "Subject", and then erased it, and then replacing it with the word "Citizen." Arguably, the word "citizen" did not even exist before Thomas Jefferson crafted the word in a way relevant to the modern world.
There is no such idea in British common law, which was profoundly influential (along with British parliamentary law) on American thinking.
British common law called for Birthright Citizenry, on a jus soli basis: Any person born in the King's realm is instantly a "subject" of the King. This captures the mediaeval idea that any person born in the King's realm has a "natural sovereign," to whom the person owes — by simple matter of the place of his birth — perpetual, unforfeitable, irrevocable allegiance for as long as he should live.
Americans don't very much like ideas like that. So TJ had to come up with a more suitable understanding of a person's relation to his State, so to capture it in a word....
Arguably, "citizen" was a notable word that was taken up by the French Revolution. They got this idea from the American Revolution. The problem was, the French had no idea what the Americans were talking about.
Somehow the French thought that this idea of "citizen" was the irreducible context in which such civic values as "liberty, equality, and brotherhood" could be achieved.
While we can applaud the French for their applause for an abstract, "individual liberty" doctrine, they never found any way to reconcile "liberty" with "equality" and "brotherhood." Indeed, not till this day.
But this was the very question the "exceptional" Americans were trying to solve. The product of their effort is the United States Constitution.
It specifies a system of governance that is, RIGHT DOWN TO THE GROUND, subject to the CONSENT of the governed.
It calls for a system of personal liberty under equal laws, with equal justice for all. Its legitimacy is subject to, completely contingent on, the Will of the People. It calls for the sovereignty of We the People — individuals acting in concert who, under the Preamble, clearly state that they are the grantors of whatever powers the federal government exercises; and they are acting to the benefit of themselves "and their posterity."
The Constitution charges the federal government to guarantee the inalienable individual rights of each its citizens, equally; it is charged with the maintenance of the courts, and with the defense of the nation against all enemies foreign and domestic.
Beyond that, the Constitution doesn't seem to give the feds much to do. Indeed, it was the sense of the Framers that most of the problems of human life should be left to the jurisdiction of local and State bodies — to people closer to the persons and communities directly under their governance. Who would be the same folks as live under the same local economic and cultural conditions as their constituents, who thus may have good, objective evidence from local experience on which to base their policy judgments.
Anyhoot, in conclusion, I'll go on to say that the word "citizen" (as we understand its meaning today), is of American coinage. Our supposed cultural colleagues in Europe to this day probably either don't understand the meaning that Americans have historically connected to the word; OR they find the word inconvenient to their own Eurozone projects.