Posted on 11/19/2012 2:11:58 PM PST by KheSanh
A petition asking the Supreme Court to give a clear concise definition of the term "Natural Born Citizen".
Whitehouse.gov url to obtain the first 150 signatures:
http://wh.gov/9dpd
What you mean is that it is removing the Jus Sanguinus requirement.
There are a lot of good points in your post, but it is extremely difficult to read.
Well, given that this is the Book of English Law which John Adams studied, and given that he actually spent several months living with, and several years working with Charles Dumas (Editor/Publisher of Vattel's Droit des Gens), I would say that this particular founder most certainly does not follow YOUR definition of Natural Born Citizen.
Not exactly.
As the SCOTUS says, jus solis was the basic rule throughout American history. It’s just that some states prohibited certain racial groups from being citizens despite their qualifying under jus solis.
The 14th prohibited this practice.
Actually it didn’t. What it did was proportionally limit the representation in Congress, and therefore in the Electoral College, of those states that chose to practice such discrimination. I’ve often thought it would be hilarious to view the apoplexy of liberals if a state legislature were to vote to disenfranchise blacks, which is of course perfectly okay according to the 14th if you are willing to pay the price.
So then, you agree with me that the founders did not almost exclusively study in French?
And that the law they studied was English law, and the language they studied it in was English?
Now it is obvious that under English law for one to be “natural born” EITHER place or parentage was enough - the law the founders were most familiar with, that being English law - did not have the requirement for BOTH parentage and place of birth in order for one to be “natural born”.
James Madison had this to say...
“It is an established maxim that birth is a criterion of allegiance. Birth however derives its force sometimes from place and sometimes from parentage, but in general place is the most certain criterion; it is what applies in the United States; it will therefore be unnecessary to investigate any other.”
It seems that the law Madison was most familiar with derived its force SOMETIMES from place and SOMETIMES from parentage - there was no requirement that it be both.
Nice try. Not only did you kill off all those original citizens which the Constitution calls “Citizens of the United States,” but you also replaced their citizenship class of “Citizens of the United States” with “naturalized citizens.” So your little deceit does not work too well with me.
Your equivocating. The issue is “natural born Citizen,” not “citizen of the United States.” So, do not speak of a “citizen of the United States” and set up your straw man argument in respect thereto and attempt to mislead people into thinking that your comments which relate to a “citizen of the United States” control what is a “natural born Citizen.” Your deceit just does not stop.
Justice Scalia has already said not to depend on the current court to uphold the Constitution. Since we saw what they have done to several key constitutional issues in the past few years, I think we can count on his statement.
You’re equivocating, not your equivocating.
"No Person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President"
I contend that the entire class of citizens represented by the italicized phrase has passed on.
Do you disagree?
What distinguishes this group of citizens from others, to your mind?
Due to the phrasing of the sentence in the Constitution, they are obviously a distinct group from "natural-born citizens."
“The issue is “natural born Citizen,”
“This section contemplates two sources of citizenship, and two sources only: birth and naturalization. The persons declared to be citizens are “all persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof.” The evident meaning of these last words is not merely subject in some respect or degree to the jurisdiction of the United States, but completely subject to their political jurisdiction and owing them direct and immediate allegiance. And the words relate to the time of birth in the one case, as they do to the time of naturalization in the other. Persons not thus subject to the jurisdiction of the United States at the time of birth cannot become so afterwards except by being naturalized, either individually, as by proceedings under the naturalization acts, or collectively, as by the force of a treaty by which foreign territory is acquired.”
“That all children born within the dominion of the United States of foreign parents holding no diplomatic office became citizens at the time of their birth does not appear to have been contested or doubted until more than fifty years after the adoption of the Constitution, when the matter was elaborately argued in the Court of Chancery of New York and decided upon full consideration by Vice Chancellor Sandford in favor of their citizenship. Lynch v. Clark, (1844) 1 Sandf.Ch. 583.”
“It thus clearly appears that, by the law of England for the last three centuries, beginning before the settlement of this country and continuing to the present day, aliens, while residing in the dominions possessed by the Crown of England, were within the allegiance, the obedience, the faith or loyalty, the protection, the power, the jurisdiction of the English Sovereign, and therefore every child born in England of alien parents was a natural-born subject unless the child of an ambassador or other diplomatic agent of a foreign State or of an alien enemy in hostile occupation of the place where the child was born.
III. The same rule was in force in all the English Colonies upon this continent down to the time of the Declaration of Independence, and in the United States afterwards, and continued to prevail under the Constitution as originally established.”
If you cannot understand those passages, you are hopelessly stupid. And being hopelessly stupid would explain why your side cannot win anything. Not in Court. Not in Congress. And not in a single state anywhere.
You have been at this for over four years and now all of a sudden you want to be paid for your time for you to answer my simple question. Really, Mr. Roger.
Also, please do tell us, if as you say Wong Kim Ark held Wong to be a “natural born Citizen,” why did the Court only cite and quote Minor and its definition of a “natural-born citizen” and not discuss that definition? Does common sense not tell you that the Court would have had to discuss Minor’s definition which required birth in the country to citizen parents and state that it disagreed with that definition or at least that the Court was extending it to cover also Wong who was not born to “citizen” parents but rather only to domiciled and resident parents? That the Court engaged in no such discussion speaks volumes regarding whether the Court held Wong to be an Article II “natural born Citizen” notwithstanding what Minor had held was a “natural-born citizen” or a Fourteenth Amendment “citizen of the United States” which was the class of citizen which Minor did not address. Since the Wong Kim Ark engaged in no such discussion, it is clear that the Court opted for the latter and not the former.
If you are going to invoke SCOTUS, I will point out that the 14th amendment overturned the Dred Scott v Sanford decision which was the law up until the 14th amendment. Dred Scott v Sanford was unabashedly jus sanguinus. Hard to argue that jus solis was the basic rule with that Dred Scott decision sitting there.
Playing stupid are we?
You said that there are only two classes of U.S. citizens, “natural born Citizens” and “naturalized citizens.” What happened to the “citizens of the United States?”
I have already asked you to provide for me the Wong Kim Ark sources (just a list) that allegedly support its “same rule” thesis. You have failed to do so.
Though Jay’s father had grown rich as a merchant, married a Van Cortlandt heiress, and counted most of the colony’s Dutch and Huguenot establishment as his relatives, and though he and his wife were loving parents, Jay’s childhood after he went to boarding school at age eight in the French-speaking Huguenot town of Nouvelle Rochelle had its share of privations.
Franklin was extremely fluent in the language so much so that he impressed French society mightily with his wit. George Washington Spoke it, but preferred to defer to Jefferson when it needed to be translated. To my knowledge many if not all of the founders were or became fluent in French.
And that the law they studied was English law, and the language they studied it in was English?
Yes, they studied English Law, but the principles of our founding were incompatible with some of it, and those incompatible parts were purged from American law. (Such as Born and Perpetual Allegiance, Debtor's Prison and The Official religion of Anglicanism.) Among the most salient differences between English and American law is the distinction between a "Subject" (Servant with perpetual allegiance to a King) and a "Citizen." (Free man who recognizes no superiors and d@mn few equals.)
It seems that the law Madison was most familiar with derived its force SOMETIMES from place and SOMETIMES from parentage - there was no requirement that it be both.
No requirement to be merely a citizen, but to be a "natural citizen" you cannot have a legitimate claim to your allegiance by any other nation. It wouldn't do to have our President subject to being drafted into another nation's army.
I agree. I don’t know how that happened. The article I was posting had no html code, so I’m not sure how it ended up as one big run-on paragraph. If you would like, I can send you the information via FReepmail. That should hold the original formatting.
Regards,
Dusty
P.S. - Happy Thanksgiving
“why did the Court only cite and quote Minor and its definition of a “natural-born citizen” and not discuss that definition?”
First, they did NOT cite what Minor wrote in an aside about the meaning of NBC, since Minor specifically refused to try to determine the meaning. They quoted Minor here:
“In Minor v. Happersett, Chief Justice Waite, when construing, in behalf of the court, the very provision of the Fourteenth Amendment now in question, said: “The Constitution does not, in words, say who shall be natural-born citizens. Resort must be had elsewhere to ascertain that.” And he proceeded to resort to the common law as an aid in the construction of this provision.”
IOW, as you would know if you could read, they cited Minor to support using English common law to determine the Founder’s intent in writing NBC.
Second, they discussed the definition at great length. The court was NOT trying to decide if WKA was a natural born subject of Great Britain, but if he met the definition, as understood by the writers, of the NBC clause. Unless you believe the court was attempting to make WKA a subject of the Queen...
They also used Minor to REFUTE the idea that the Slaughterhouse case meant the court restricted citizenship by birth to those of citizen parents:
“That neither Mr. Justice Miller nor any of the justices who took part in the decision of The Slaughterhouse Cases understood the court to be committed to the view that all children born in the United States of citizens or subjects of foreign States were excluded from the operation of the first sentence of the Fourteenth Amendment is manifest from a unanimous judgment of the Court, delivered but two years later, while all those judges but Chief Justice Chase were still on the bench, in which Chief Justice Waite said: “Allegiance and protection are, in this connection” (that is, in relation to citizenship),
reciprocal obligations. The one is a compensation for the other: allegiance for protection, and protection for allegiance. . . . At common law, with the nomenclature of which the framers of the Constitution were familiar, it was never doubted that all children, born in a country of [p680] parents who were its citizens, became themselves, upon their birth, citizens also. These were natives, or natural-born citizens, as distinguished from aliens or foreigners. Some authorities go further, and include as citizens children born within the jurisdiction, without reference to the citizenship of their parents. As to this class, there have been doubts, but never as to the first. For the purposes of this case, it is not necessary to solve these doubts. It is sufficient for everything we have now to consider that all children born of citizen parents within the jurisdiction are themselves citizens.
Minor v. Happersett (1874), 21 Wall. 162, 166-168.”
That was found in the latter part of the WKA decision, when they were discussing the 14th Amendment - having already discussed the NBC clause previously.
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