First of all, the concept of sovereignty residing in the People is a relatively new concept in the world. A the time of the Founding, the fledgling United States was perhaps the only country in the world that formally placed its sovereignty squarely in the hands of its citizens. Everywhere else in the world sovereignty resided in a person: a king, a sultan, and emperor, a prince, a potentate: subjects, not citizens, owed their allegiance to their sovereign and the sovereign had a reciprocal duty of protection.
This arrangement was seen as natural. The English Common Law recognized Natural Born Subjects. These were those who were born into the protection of the king to whom they owed fealty, loyalty and duty. This status was primarily determined by where a child was born, and why? Because the King said so. And to some degree this status was also extended to the children of subjects born outside the realms of the king. Again, why? Because the King decreed it. if the King decreed it, it had to be natural because the king was naturally the king.
Different kingdoms, different rules. The fledgling United States did not want its people to be subjects of any monarch. The intention was that sovereignty was to reside with the people themselves.
This created a bit of a conundrum since without a monarch, how was anyone to know what the standards would be for the determination of citizenship of a people with no allegiance to a monarch?
On this matter there is a plethora of opinion. Many courts have simply tied to graft the British concept of a subject and how the King determined this status onto our laws despite the undeniable fact that we had abandoned the entire status of being as “subject”. Some courts have made reference to Continental tradition, most notably in the form of Vattel’s “The Law of Nations”.
The point here is that the founders decided to use the term “Natural Born Citizen” in the Constitutional requirements to serve as President without precisely defining the term. From later writings and scholarship on the subject, it is clear that even at the time of the Founding there wasn’t any unanimity of opinion as to the meaning of this term.
It is clear enough that intent was to define a class of citizen who acquired their citizenship as a natural consequence of the circumstances of their birth, as opposed to a voluntary adoption of citizenship later in life. The question was always how to define the terms of measurement and criteria for the determination of this “at birth” citizenship by the operation of natural law. This is covered in my comments in Post 32 and others above.
But there seems to be a reluctance by some to accept that our law making can have any influence or effect on our thinking about this subject. But that ignores the fact that our laws and statutes are the embodiment of our own sovereignty. When “We the People” speak, we speak much as a King. We choose our own laws, which so far as they comport with our basic law, the Constitution, are determinative.
As sovereign people we have every right, not to redefine the Constitution outside the Amendment process, not to redefine the meaning of Natural Born Citizen, but to clarify how we will determine which children are those whose circumstances of birth, taken as a whole, qualify them to be considered Natural Born Citizens within the broadly understood meaning of that term.
We cannot be held hostage to the whims and preferences of long dead kings and potentates.
You must have laws and monarchs to tell YOU what a Natural Born Citizen is...and I understand that...but, like the Founders, I reject the concept.
NATURALLY, a child born in the US to parents who are US citizens can have no real obligation to ANYONE except the US.
If there’s something complicating that fact...you do not have a Natural Born Citizen...period.
This is NATURAL LAW. It’s quite simple.