Emmerich Vattel disagrees.
“He was born at Coco solo naval base. I’ve seen the doctor’s signature on an admission page for his mother.”
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The birth may have been formally acknowledged there as a matter of course, but the evidence does necessarily not shoW that the birth took place there.
Besides, I also said this: Regardless, he would have failed the Born on U.S. Soil requirement of the NBC test whether he were born on a U.S. military base, born in the PCZ, or otherwise. We weren’t at war in the region (invading army exception) and his father wasn’t a U.S. Ambassador (diplomatic exception).
NBC is derived from the Law of Nations and the Natural Law. The founders would not have claimed McCain as a Natural Born U.S. citizen. A child of a U.S. Ambassador to Panama? Yes. A child of an invading and hostile and occupying U.S. force subjugating Panama? Yes. But a child of an Admiral performing a routine role in peacetime under an agreement between U.S. and Panama? No. It turns out his case did not even fall under U.S. naturalization laws at the time so he technically didn’t even merit recognition as “citizen” for a while after his birth. A specific retroactive naturaluzation law had to be passed to clean up the problem.
Emmerich Vattel disagrees.
Congress passed a law making the PCZ a US territory. Persons born in a US territory are considered to be born on US soil. Now there are different kinds of US territories but the PCZ was the type of territory that was considered US soil.