But you, probably deliberately, misunderstand the point. Congress can apply its understanding of the Constitution, and make laws on that basis. But they cannot say that "natural born" means anyone naturalized in the first five years of life, or something like that. They can make the law, but it won't be Constitutional, and the courts will or should strike it down. They cannot change the definition from that understood when the Constitution, or an amendment to it, was passed. Sometimes determining just what was understood can be difficult, and in this case, as with many terms in the main body of the Constitution, requires recourse to English Common law.
Congress can't redefine "letter of Marque" or the meaning of of their powers. The reason should be obvious, it would render the written Constitution as meaningless, which of course is the point of the "living document" folks, who aren't happy with the limits placed on government in that Old Rag written by dead white men.
You aren't one of those are you?
“Congress can apply its understanding of the Constitution, and make laws on that basis.”
Yes. That’s the point I was trying to get across. I wanst trying to say more.
” But they cannot say that “natural born” means anyone naturalized in the first five years of life, or something like that.”
OK, but that’s a hypothetical that’s not at issue imho. I didnt see any argument that Congress was distorting the meaning of the term so much they’d have an unconstitutional law, I was seeing arguments that Congress couldnt regulate the term at all, because to regulate is to define and its ‘already there’ in the Constitution. The latter statement is - arguable at best. People are arguing that it might have to be litigated to know the ‘truth’, at which point the SCOTUS would properly give deference to judgement of Congress and weigh in on the boundaries of what Congress could regulate wrt this term. But SCOTUS has allowed latitude in Congressional definitions and regulations in a number of areas.
“Sometimes determining just what was understood can be difficult, and in this case, as with many terms in the main body of the Constitution, requires recourse to English Common law.”
Sure. See my previous post, which is helpful in the case of the Mccain situation (pretty cut n dried). As previous post points out, there is precedent for natural born being defined to include being born outside the US to citizen parents.
Congress would be well within its powers to define ‘natural born citizenship’ in terms of citizenship of parents and in terms of what the 14th Amendment provides wrt birthright citizenship. I dont have a different view of the boundaries of Congressional power, just a view that the laws being discussed here would not be overturned by SCOTUS, were SCOTUS to follow the law, constitution and precedent.
(BTW, I am sure there *are* areas where Congress could overstep and/or make a contentious claim wrt regulating citizenship. I’m of the belief that the Congress has the power to regulate the birthright citizenship to exclude tourists and illegal aliens; this is based on an understanding of ‘under the jurisdication thereof’; however, I heard via a Congressman that Justice Scalia expounded on it to a group of Congressmen and suggested that it wouldnt survive a SCOTUS constitutional test.)
“”living document” folks, ... You aren’t one of those are you?” Nope. I’m a Scalia/Roberts/Thomas fan.