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The notion that Congress didn't have any idea what they were doing when they did it is idiocy.

That's not my notion. It's just more of your straw.

I think each attendee at the Convention and ratifying debates had a sense of what "natural born citizen" meant to him. And I think that the vast majority, insofar as they gave much thought to it, understood the term in accordance with Blackstone and the familiar term "natural born subject." One must consider how steeped in ECL terminology and jurisprudence many of the attendees were:

""Blackstone's Commentaries had a wide circulation in America at the time of the Constitutional Convention. It is said that sixteen signers of the Declaration of Independence knew the book cover to cover. A source book of legal science, a landmark in law and literature. It is safe to say that it contents were familiar to every American lawyer in public life in 1789 and 1791. Sunray Oil Corp. v. Allbritton, 187 F.2d 475,478 (Holmes, dissenting) (5th Cir. 1951)

As I've pointed out, the term "natural born" was prior to the Convention a term in English usage associated solely with England and the common law. You make much of the use of "citizen," but it is pure presumption that such changed the legal rule in their minds, given that France at that time operated under a similar jus soli view.

But at the time of the adoption of the Constitution of the United States in 1789, and long before, it would seem to have been the rule in Europe generally, as it certainly was in France, that, as said by Pothier, "citizens, true and native-born citizens, are those who are born within the extent of the dominion of France," and mere birth within the realm gives the rights of a native-born citizen, independently of the origin of the father or mother, and of their domicil; and children born in a foreign country, of a French father who had not established his domicil there nor given up the intention of returning, were also deemed Frenchmen, as Laurent says, by "a favor, a sort of fiction," and Calvo, "by a sort of fiction of exterritoriality, considered as born in France, and therefore invested with French nationality." Pothier Trait des Personnes, pt. 1, tit. 2, sect. 1, nos. 43, 45; Walsh-Serrant v. Walsh-Serrant, (1802) 3 Journal du Palais, 384; S.C., S. Merlin, Jurisprudence, (5th ed.) Domicile, Â§ 13; Prefet du Nord v. Lebeau, (1862) Journal du Palais, 1863, 312 and note; 1 Laurent Droit Civil, no. 321; 2 Calvo Droit International, (5th ed.) Â§ 542; Cockburn on Nationality, 13, 14; Hall's International Law, (4th ed.) Â§ 68. The general principle of citizenship by birth within French territory prevailed until after the French Revolution, and was affirmed in successive constitutions from the one adopted by the Constituent Assembly in 1791 to that of the French Republic in 1799." U.S. v. Wong Kim Ark, 169 U.S. 649, 666 (1898).

Your pretensions notwithstanding, use of the term "citizen" doesn't lead inexorably to Vattel.

No evidence is necessary to establish self-evident truths.

This doesn't even rise to the level of a hand-wave.

"It is axiomatic" has long been your code words for "I don't have any evidence, so I'll just declare that what I say is true."

You fail to grasp the fundamentals of debate and proof.

They aren't "authorities" if they do not know what the F*** they are talking about. They are false authorities, and that's pretty much all you have.

Whine. Protest. Whine.

Again, your standard by which to gauge whether these people "know what they are talking about" is you. Pure subjectivity. Though in the objective, reality-based world of history and legal scholarship, these authorities are recognized as being credible sources. I know it's frustrating for you that the people you keep trying to hold up don't carry that same status.

You eventually catch on to the obvious.

Right, like making the point that being in attendance may grant them a superior understanding of the collective view within the Convention, if there is evidence the matter was at all discussed. But you lack that evidence, which means that attendance is an irrelevant factor.

Your claim; your proof. You fail here again. You don't grasp the obvious.

The absence of a record does not establish a record of absence. You are attempting to prove a negative.

I don't need to prove a negative (nor can that be done). Logically, the burden of proof rests with the claimant (Your claim, your proof). Your claim is that a book published in 1817 must be taken as high proof of what "natural born citizen" meant because some persons associated with that work were delegates either at the Constitutional Convention or a later state ratifying convention. And that might be true if in fact there was discussion and debate about that term at those conventions. You can't just presume that.

An absence of a record does tend to prove a record of absence, given that Madison took copious notes of the Convention proceedings and given that there is a record of MUCH discussion and debate on other issues.

As it's often said "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence." Your claim (that near the entire legal community writing on this topic after 1787 was in error) is extraordinary. So you need really solid proof that such was the case.

But you don't have that. You don't even have what might be called a prima facie case based on slight evidence." You have merely a lot of hand-waving and assumption, coupled with a self-inflated pomposity that you somehow know better than the near entire historical and legal community of the past 230 years.

I'm fine with defaulting back to the 1776 meaning.

Which was what? Where's your demonstration of how Jefferson used or defined "citizen" in the Declaration and how that aligns with Vattel's definition? This is what would prove your clam that "citizen" came from Vattel and not some other source (e.g., Rousseau or the nation of France or the simple connection between "citizen" and "republic" dating back to ancient Greece).

Where's your proof? All we see here from you is hand-waving and bluster.

It says they can't owe any allegiance to any other sovereignty.

Right. Just as a few months earlier the Congress had debated the Civil Rights Act, which said in pertinent part:

"That all persons born in the United States and not subject to any foreign power, excluding Indians not taxed, are hereby declared to be citizens of the United States[.]"

Given that Bingham states that the 14th Amendment, like the Civil Rights Act before it, was merely declaratory of the existing law, it should be clear to any thinking person that Bingham's "not owing allegiance to any other sovereignty" means the same thing as "not subject to any foreign power [and] excluding Indians."

And we know from the earlier debates what the words "not subject to any foreign power" meant. Did that mean all foreign nationals residing in the U.S. No! It meant a particular class of foreign persons, namely, diplomats and their children. The exception to birth citizenship found in the existing common law.

Given that the 14th Amendment was quite consciously done to elevate the rule of the CRA to Constitutional status,, there is no basis upon which to claim "not owing allegiance to any foreign power" had a meaning in Bingham's mind distinct from the Civil Rights Act. And his later remarks ("all persons born in the Republic are natural born citizens") slams this point home.

You mean other than the fact that his Co-Counsel, Four State delegates and Supreme Court justices,

No, here I mean outside this little pocket of lawyers associated with Samuel Roberts largely obscure work. I mean other places, like Connecticut (where Swift and Hillhouse take a different view) or Masschussetts (whose assembly had been using "NBS" and "NBC" interchangeably) or Virginia (where the citizenship statute drafted by Jefferson adopted a jus soli principle (the statute St. George Tucker says is "accordant" with the ECL principle and Blackstone)?

I'm not seeing waters of such purity that you can state Rawle somehow polluted them and do so with a straight face.

And neither Bushrod Washington nor John Marshall state what you claim: neither purports to apply Vattel as the rule on birth citizenship in the U.S. You simply persist in that disingenuous claim.

They may very well have privately chastised him, but this is not likely to be so public as would the chastisement from publishing a book with other distinguished Judges names in it and asserting the law of their state stems from Vattel.

Oh, right, I'm forgetting your "a rule or presumptions is applied, or not applied, depending on whether in the moment if favors me or not" technique.

Judges are not noted for their Humor regarding points of law with which they disagree.

Says the man who has never presented a case before one.

That may be true in an actual case where the judge has to issue a ruling having a real effect. But in a book where the point of law isn't even relevant to the statutory inquiry coming from the legislature? Probably less so.

Well rational people consider that pretty good evidence that he was repeatedly informed as to what was correct, and deliberately chose to ignore it, and state his own opinion in it's place.

Like who? Do you have any historical evidence Rawle was "repeatedly informed" of this? You keep making these claims about that period for which you repeatedly come up empty on proof. Or here are you going to repair to your lame "I had the links somewhere, but . . but. . now I just can't find them" excuse?

It demonstrates that your English Common Law rule was not inviolable.

Is has always been understood that the common law can be restated, modified or abrogated by statute. So you're making a non-point here. But of course Chancellor Sandford applied the ECL rule, because NY had a Reception Statute. And there was obviously no evidence that Vattel had ever been recognized as the rule in NY, either at the state or national level. Mr. Clarke cited the law of nations and lost the argument. The U.S. Government cited Vattel in WK and lost.

There has never been a period in our nation's history where there has been any general recognition that Vattel or the law of nations underpins the meaning of "natural born citizen." Your position is grounded on supposition.

As for the Common law, let me have Madison explain it to your childish little authoritarian-@$$-licking pea brain.

I've already explained (twice, I believe) this excerpt to you. I see no reason to try a third time to educate a demonstrated legal incompetent on the same point.