... according to the conceptions of a Frenchman who wrote about it 251 years ago.
Sorry, but you can't really consider that to be a legal description.
Well then Zippy, why do we follow the Constitution which was written and signed in 1787? Hum? Or is that irrelevant too?
Its amazing to me that people can actually discount the LITERATURE that was written and that the Constitution DREW on for its language and principles as if they were irrelevant.
I suppose you think that ALL literature is worthless then as well.
Your argument has zero logic.
http://travel.state.gov/travel/cis_pa_tw/cis/cis_1753.html
Now go ahead and tell me this is what the Founders and the US Constitution has in mind. Go ahead.
He is demonstratively and admittedly NOT a Natural Born Citizen.
... according to the conceptions of a Frenchman who wrote about it 251 years ago.
Sorry, but you can’t really consider that to be a legal description.
***
The lawyers amongst the Founding Fathers had their legal training in English Common Law ...
When we separated from England - did we set up an ENTIRE new body of laws ??? Of course not ... The Founding Fathers JUST modified the ones that they objected to and left the other ones intact.
Case in point - according to English Common Law, English subjects could not free themselves from loyalty to the sovreign, without consent of that sovreign ... BUT, we did just that.
The phrase “natural born citizen” was NEVER modified by the Founding Fathers, so it is MORE THAN reasonable that they left the original definition intact.
Per English Common Law, a natural born subject was born within the sovreign’s dominion AND with a single, distinct loyalty to that sovreign - and that sovreign ONLY.
Obama was likely born in the United States, but with TWO loyalties - that of his father (per the British Nationality Act of 1948) AND that of the United States (14th Amendment).
This fact necessarily disqualifies him from natural born citizenship.
QED ...
If you have a better one, please, everyone would welcome the new information.
And, Please remember that the Constitution was written over 220 years ago, so don't give me any 20th century citations - the Framers wouldn't have used them
It's the best one we've got. There is no defintion in the US Code, because their cannot be one. Congress has no power to define Constitutional terms. They mean what they meant to those who wrote, and more importantly those who ratified, the Constitution. It's the way contracts are. One side can't change the terms. Put another way, only those who established the government can change it's charter. The first words of the Preamble tell who that was.
Actually he was Swiss, writing in French, the diplomatic language of the time. A language that many of the authors of the Declaratoin of Independence and the Constitution at minimum could read, and almost as many could also speak. This they did, there exists a letter from none other than Benjamin Franklin, often called the First American, which indicates that a copy of Vattel's work was available to the authors of the Constitution. And that was the translated version, Franklin and others likely had versions in the original French as well.
Switzerland was the only federal Republic at the time he wrote, and at the time ours was established. Britian was and continues to be, a Monarchy. In 1758, when he wrote "Law of Nations", it was as in 1776, one where the King was far more than a mere figurehead, even if not an absolute ruler. We emulated the Swiss, and through off the British. Whose "common law" on matters of citizenship, rather than subject-ship, shall we follow?
A good chunk of the US Code, Chapter 12 Subchapter III NATIONALITY AND NATURALIZATION. You'll not find the term "Natural Born Citizen" anywhere in that subchapter, or Chapter 12, IMMIGRATION AND NATIONALITY.
Yes and the founders relied upon many of his coceptions in their consruction of the constitution. That can be established at trial as part of the founding dicta upon which the founders framed the constitution.