That is not your argument. Sheesh. Why not just hang a sign saying "I'm here employing the straw man argument fallacy." I think I know what my argument is, thank you.
Your argument is that the meaning and character is precisely the same,
No. I've not said that.
and that the nature of both derive from English Common Law.
I've not said that either.
That there is no actual difference between them,
I've not said that either.
and that it was just merely a whim to start using the term "citizen" and to eschew using the term "subject."
Nope, not that either. You've now run the table with 4 straight mischaracterizations. Great job.
What I've said is 1) that "citizen" is the term matched with the republican form of government (terms which originate outside the common law as England had not operated as a republic); 2) that "subject" often continued to be used after 1776 without those using it seeing any inherent discordance between a person being termed a "subject" within the now-recognized republican government; and 3) that the relationship between person and sovereign was seen as being transferred from the English king to the new sovereign as the King's successor.
The latter is illustrated by both James Madison and the court opinion in Ainslee v. Martin.
It was a relational distinction. I've not read anything by anyone contemporary to support your "change of character" distinction.
In other words, your argument is that between them there is a distinction without a difference.
The relationship has changed. But as to the rule by which that relationship was established by birth, you are correct: both subjecthood and citizenship were established by birth within the allegiance of the sovereign, King or Republic, as the case may be. There was no distinction made on that point.
This is where you and I differ in methodology. I do not believe something merely because people unconnected to the events express an opinion.
Yes, your methodology is to presume you want want the answer to be, then force-fit and elevate anything that seems to support your pre-determined answer, while categorically rejecting anything that is contrary. As I said two years ago, yours is a methodology shot-through with projection.
I care not what the opinions of "experts" happens to be, because I see this as the fallacy of false authority.
The only fallacy operative here is your misapplication of that fallacy. Persons speaking within the field of their expertise is NOT an instance of "false authority." That the great weight of historical and legal commentary on a point of history and Constitutional law is arrayed against you is simple fact. Your "fallacy of false authority" bit is something you've simply pulled out of your tushy to try to deny that fact.
We have seen numerous examples throughout history where the legal "experts" are just dead wrong, the latest example being "Obergefell v. Hodges".
With Wong Kim Ark one can demonstrate how the reasoning and precedent can be traced back through the 39th Congress, back through Lynch v. Clarke, back further through Justice Story, Rawle, Kent, and Tucker, and no later than Swift 8 years after the Constitution. Plus, add in the linguistic analysis (the interchangeable usage of "NBS" and "NBC") and it can be traced back to 1776.
The same cannot be said for Obergefell. Again, your silly methodology whenever you get faced with a SCOTUS opinion you don't like is to look around for some other one and proclaim on that basis you don't have to address it. Oh, but if you happen to find one that you think supports you (e.g., Minor v. Happersett) then suddenly for that instance the SCOTUS is credible.
Your M.O. boils down to: "If it supports me, then it's a true authority. If it doesn't, it's a false authority." Yours is a methodology that is persuasive to you, but to no one who actually has a knowledge of the topic.
Unless they have first hand personal knowledge regarding the events in question, or some reasonable connection to the same, their opinion is just an opinion, and may very well be wrong.
As I've pointed out, you've got no one was actually in attendance in Philadelphia who directly supports your view. All you've got is a bunch of imagined support which doesn't withstand a moment's scrutiny. Plus, you do things like discount Wm. Rawle (who was appointed directly by G. Washington) but get all gushy over the obscure Samuel Roberts (who can only be traced to Washington via an intermediary (Lewis)). It's a silly, result-driven methodology you employ.
You have not demonstrated this.
But I have. "Does not necessarily signify" simply requires me to identify an instance where "citizen" didn't come with a jus sanguinis rule attached to it. And I've demonstrated that in France. And, mind you, this isn't in context just some obscure counter-example; it happens to be the nation that - apart from England - was the best known to the Founders and Framers.
There is more evidentiary support for the claim that it does than there is for the claim that it doesn't.
Assertion without argument. Another of your tried methodologies. But, do tell, apart from the hagiographiy that you and others attempt to create as to Vattel, what is that "evidentiary support?" I predict here is yet another example of your selective sampling technique at work.
"Natural Born" is an adjective in this context for both "Subject" and for "Citizen", which are the nouns. The distinction in character is dependent upon the meaning of those, not on the modifier "natural born."
But the modifier has a meaning, and that meaning goes to the heart of the question "what it required to be a 'natural born citizen?' -- Does it suffice that one is born here and a citizen at birth? Or does it require some characteristic of the father (parents)?" As, as I've asserted, "natural born" in English usage (then as today) simply conveyed the meaning "having that nature or characteristic at birth" without any sense of "partaking of the nature or character of the father." To be a "natural born athlete" doesn't require the father have had great athletic talent. To be a "natural born citizen" didn't (and doesn't) require the father to have been a citizen.
You can hop up and down all day that you think there's some great character distinction between "subject" and "citizen." But that is just to evade the question whether to be a "natural born" subject or citizen required that the father have been a subject or citizen at that moment. The ansswer is "no." "Natural born" in English usage does NOT convey the meaning "of like parent(s)." It's fatuous to assert that the Framers utilized that modifier, intending a meaning which it hadn't had up to that point, and that they did so without any discussion among themselves or explanation for others.
Oh, didn't you hear? They put it back after Cromwell died.
LOL. And 30 years after Cromwell died, the English parliamentarians tossed out James II. It seems they missed another of your historical memos (along with Washington, Adams, etc., who didn't learn that we didn't have a "Revolution).
And what happened that next year? Oh, right, England passed the "Bill of Rights of 1689," the document that granted to English subjects things like protection against "cruel and unusual punishment," that taxes could be levied only by the legislative branch (Parliament), the people's right to petition, etc. Gosh, does this sound familiar? Do you think this was an inspiration for our Founders and Framers? Just maybe? :)
You substitute the Constitution as the document most closely related with citizenship, when this is in fact incorrect.
Rather, I correctly point to the Constitution as the document using the term "natural born citizen," and I correctly keep sight that it's that term that bears on the eligibility question that has been the topic of most of these threads.
Citizenship was created by the Declaration, and *THAT* was heavily influenced by Vattel.
The Declaration was influenced by many things and many writers. That Jefferson first penned "subject" in his draft suggests, does it not, that he may have had someone like Blackstone's writings open at the time? Again, see, Blackstone's View of Natural Law and Its Influence on the Formation of American Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. Or maybe in waxing lyrical about liberty, Jefferson then had another Englishman in view, John Locke. Remember this?
"Thomas Jefferson ranked Locke, along with Locke’s compatriot Algernon Sidney, as the most important thinkers on liberty."
Oh, wait. Silly me. Of course you don't remember. Your M.O. is to ignore anything that might interfere with your careful sampling of sources so you can pretend only Vattel was influential.
Burlamaqui was also Swiss, and he had a few things to say on this topic.
And he was the first to speak of happiness being the rightful end of man's natural state. But, in your "it can only be about Vattel" tunnel-vision view of history, that escapes notice.
But on this other thing he said you highlight:
XIII. Subjects are sometimes called cives, or members of the civil state; some indeed make no distinction between these two terms, but I think it is better to distinguish them. The appellation of civis ought to be understood only of those, who share in all the advantages and privileges of the association, and who are properly members of the state either by birth, or in some other manner.
"Civis" is the Latin word for "citizen." And Burlamaqui notes that "civis" and "subject" are often used without distinction!. And he notes the primary source of "cives" is "by birth" (and I see no reference to "father" or "parent" anywhere here).
This is but further proof there is hardly an historical source you can't misread.
Sure, but the most influential was Vattel.
And your source here is one that starts out by acknowledging that the authors I've been saying were hugely influential are widely recognized as having been hugely influential:
There are many illustrious names whose books and treatises were read and assimilated by our Founding Fathers. Some of those influences are still well known, and their names and their ideas (or at least a vague notion of their ideas) are still heard in lectures on government (Locke and Montesquieu, for example).
And then the author goes on to list 4 "forgotten" writers, listing Vattel 4th out of those four (after first discussing Sidney and Burlamaqui). And that "Jefferson "ranked Vattel’s seminal The Law of Nations, or the Principles of Natural Law as highly as similar treatises by Grotius and Pufendorf."
Well, duh, "ranked as highly as similar treatises" is a far cry from saying Vattel influenced Jefferson well above-and-beyond any other writer. Again, you see in a source only that which you wish to see and on top of that misread it to say more than it actually does.
If it looks like I am half-assing it, that's because I am.
Oh, you were just as stupid then as now. Back "then" was when you were making idiotic comments like "[Wong Kim Ark] never uses the term 'Natural Born Citizen.'" My not being around back then just means that my list of incompetent things you've said and argued is shorter than it might otherwise have been.
You just take yourself too seriously while the rest of us don't.
Who are "the rest of us?" If you haven't noticed, your "father citizen" (or "citizen parent") rule for "natural born citizen" has largely been dismissed on this Forum as being nonsense. You really are getting delusional -- both as to the alleged historical support you think you see as well as the support which your view currently holds.
Yes, and then he points out the exception which renders the "general rule" of null effect,
And this comment is just as silly as saying WKA never uses the term NBC.
There are rules. And there are recognized exceptions to those rules. But in your silly mind you look at the stated exception and draw the erroneous conclusion that there was no general rule to start. Nonsense.
Yes, a deliberate contradiction to the "general rule."
Nope. You still have no clue why the September 15, 1776, date is significant to Justice Story (nor why, since the circumstances of that date no longer exist, the exception to the general rule no longer applies either).
Do you need me to explain it to you this time?
Oh, and while we're discussing Joseph Story, I will point out that he wasn't a Delegate to the Convention, or a member of a Ratifying legislature, so I don't consider him a primary source anyways. I regard him as one of those "authorities" that deliberately tried to steer "natural born citizen" into English Common Law because he had the same agenda as others who attempted to do this.
Oh, you are too funny. It was barely a week ago that you were hauling out Justice Story, proclaiming " Nope, that was settled 11 years earlier, according to Justice Joseph Story." So Story has gone from a recognized authority who had "settled" a point under discussion to someone who really isn't much of an authority.
It's flip-flops and inconsistencies like this that make you so easy to mock.
Finally, while not directly on-topic, this does tie into your argument. You say of Vattel: "That the very notion of States forming a Republic of "perpetual union" is right out of the pages of Droit des Gens." So question: if this from Vattel provided the political theory for our Union, does the "perpetual union" mean that Southern state secession in 1861 was ultra vires ("illicit" to use another term)? I suspect that this is another point that you'll prove to be grossly inconsistent.
Boring day, so I decided to take a look at what you wrote. Got all the way to here before I saw anything to which I felt like commenting.
As I've pointed out, you've got no one was actually in attendance in Philadelphia who directly supports your view.
Ah, but I do. It just isn't worth the trouble of sharing it with you though. I tried once, but you wouldn't shut the f*** up long enough for me to show it to you.
Now, I don't see any point whatsoever in showing you evidence against your position. You simply do not care what evidence is brought forth. You will cite some later court decision from people who weren't there, and smugly believe you have trumped the point.
You are a fanatic that can't be swayed, and really doesn't want to see any contrary evidence. Here's an example of what I mean.
Plus, you do things like discount Wm. Rawle (who was appointed directly by G. Washington) but get all gushy over the obscure Samuel Roberts (who can only be traced to Washington via an intermediary (Lewis)).
Who was appointed to, and occupied the exact same position PRIOR to William Rawle, who was a State convention Delegate, and who was Samuel Roberts only source of Legal training, meaning Roberts got it from the Horses' mouth.
Apart from that, you deliberately LIE by omitting the fact that Samuel Roberts merely wrote up the opinion of the ENTIRE F*CKING SUPREME COURT OF PENNSYLVANIA, but you insist on characterizing it as "His" opinion.
You keep focusing on Samuel Roberts, because you realize that there is no f***ing way you can discount the opinion of the ENTIRE F*CKING SUPREME COURT OF PENNSYLVANIA.
You ignore the fact that there is no way that Robert's could have published that book, and indeed, a second edition, if it had not been true. Do you think the ENTIRE F*CKING SUPREME COURT OF PENNSYLVANIA would let it stand if it did not reflect their opinion? Their names are affixed to that book.
And here are their names.
Do you really believe that Roberts could attribute to them such an assertion that US Citizenship is based on Vattel were it not regarded by those men as true? Your assertion would seem contingent upon the premise that the Most powerful and most learned legal experts of that time period don't know how to sue for false claims.
For what it's worth, i've got statements and history from some of those men that confirm this is their position, but again, you are such a mouth it is pointless to bother looking them up to show you.
What you don't ever seem to grasp is the concept that were your claim true, there would be no contrary evidence against your position.
The fact that much contrary evidence against your position exists, is a very good piece of proof that your claim is just wrong. Again, if it were correct, there wouldn't be any contrary evidence, let alone so much of it.
I'm not going to read the rest of what you wrote. It is not worth while to try to reason with a fanatic.