you are misreading Shanks v DuPont because Shanks citizenship was wholly dependent upon the laws that govern British subjects who under those laws, owed perpetual allegiance to the Crown that ONLY the Crown could absolve.
And it was these British barbaric feudal laws of people as subjects and not free citizens that eventually lead to the War of 1812 where it was settled once and for all that the British crown had no authority over and could not require allegiance of the newly freed citizens of the newly formed nation of the United States of America. Ann Shanks was not one who chose freedom, she chose to remain the British subject that she had been from her birth.
https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/28/242/case.html
The question, then, is whether her subsequent removal with her husband operated as a virtual dissolution of her allegiance and fixed her future allegiance to the British Crown
Page 28 U. S. 247
by the Treaty of Peace of 1783. Our opinion is that it did. In the first place, she was born under the allegiance of the British Crown, and no act of the government of Great Britain ever absolved her from that allegiance. Her becoming a citizen of South Carolina did not, ipso facto, work any dissolution of her original allegiance [end quote]
What you have failed to apply here is the fact that at the time Ann Scott married Mr. Shanks and then left America, never returning, Ann chose to remain a natural born British subject. There was no federal government at that time, there was no Constitution at that time, all that existed was the Articles of Confederation that gave NO authority to a central government regarding citizenship. At the time in question, south Carolina dictated who was and who was not a citizen and at the time of Ann Scott Shank’s birth, South Carolina was a British territory under British laws, including those of citizenship. And therefore, where it is stated that Ann did not loose her birthright citizenship, that citizenship was British.
Now because her father adhered to the cause of the revolution, Ann then became, by proxy through her father, a naturalized citizen of the state of South Carolina as did every British born subject in the state who adhered to the cause of the revolution and took the oath of allegiance to the revolution.
Therefore, one needs to look to British Law of the time as THAT is the law that governed, not any US laws that may have subsequently been passed more than a decade after the fact. While Ann remained in her father’s house, she retained the privileges of her father’s citizenship, however, when Ann chose to leave and rejoin the Brits in the midst of the conflict, leave South Carolina and remain in Britain, raise her family as British subjects and die as a British subject, that choice of Ann’s is what caused her children to have to file the claim under the protection of the 1783 Peace Treaty that states,
“That British subjects who now hold lands in the territories of the United States and American citizens who now hold lands in the dominions of His Majesty shall continue to hold them according to the nature and tenure of their respective estates and titles therein, ... &c., and that neither they nor their heirs or assigns shall, so far as respects the said lands, and the legal remedies incident thereto, be regarded as aliens.”
Ann Shanks was an alien in regards to citizenship, she was not an alien in regards to inheritance. AND THAT was the finding of the court.
Thanks for posting that. I learned quite a bit. Wouldn’t have looked at the case on my own.