Posted on 05/21/2013 9:52:10 AM PDT by Ray76
The reason I softened them was to show that all persons who are citizens by birth appeared to be "natural born citizens" for the purpose of Article II eligibility.
That, and it makes the text easier to read.
If I were doing it over, the only thing I would change would be upping the confidence level even more that children born citizens to US citizens overseas are natural born citizens as well.
It is an accurate representation of our history and the law.
That, and I might clarify that those in the overlap are born in the US to citizen parents.
Your diagram attempts to show two sets labeled “born abroad to US citizen parent(s)” and “born in US to non-citizen parents”. These are disjoint sets yet you attempt to show an intersection.
You didn’t even separate the factors.
Incredible.
Not exactly accurate. There were small numbers of Black citizens going all the way back to the Revolutionary era. The 14th amendment merely naturalized en masse, the ones that weren't. The first generation were NOT natural citizens, they were naturalized. (same as the founders) It was the second generation which were natural citizens.
But your point reinforces mine. I argue that we never used (Nationally) English Common law regarding our citizens. The 14th amendment would have been redundant if we were using English Common Law.
You're not reading it right, Ray.
The left circle is Jus Soli: Citizenship that comes from place of birth. The right circle is Jus Sanguinis: Citizenship that comes from parentage.
So the left part is people who get their citizenship solely from jus soli (born on US soil, but parents were not citizens at the time of birth, e.g., Marco Rubio). The center is people who have both jus soli and jus sanguinis (born on US soil of one or more citizen parents). And the right is those who get their citizenship solely from jus sanguinis (born a citizen abroad to one or more citizen parents, e.g., Ted Cruz.)
Maybe I can change it to make it more clear. I wasn't trying to produce something with total originality, I largely imitated the presentation of an existing but incorrect diagram.
His derivation of US citizenship through his mother is not naturalization. Look at the INA sections on derivation of US citizenship and on naturalization.
Your attempted imitation of an existing diagram is obvious.
Equally obvious is that you do not understand the diagram you imitate, or venn diagrams generally. Distinguish between "agreeing with" and "understanding".
You graphic is nothing more than a background for your text, it does not convey any information. It is meaningless, to wit:
So the left part is people who get their citizenship solely from jus soli (born on US soil, but parents were not citizens at the time of birth, e.g., Marco Rubio). The center is people who have both jus soli and jus sanguinis (born on US soil of one or more citizen parents). And the right is those who get their citizenship solely from jus sanguinis (born a citizen abroad to one or more citizen parents, e.g., Ted Cruz.)Therefore:
Your error stems from failing to separate the individual facts.
Here is a simple venn diagram.
There are two sets: the red set and the blue set. The intersection "red and blue" is shown as green. The diagram conveys the fact that some items may be red, some blue, and some both red and blue (green).
As you contend, a "born citizen" may be so by jus sanguinis or jus soli.
Note that the diagram does not label the intersection of jus sanguinis and jus soli. It is only part of the picture. Let's fix that
Now the diagram is complete.
Further explanation can be found at
http://thebirthers.org/misc/logic.htm
The citizenship diagrams are from this site.
“His derivation of US citizenship through his mother is not naturalization. Look at the INA sections on derivation of US citizenship and on naturalization.”
You contradict yourself.
So the left part is people who get their citizenship solely from jus soli (born on US soil, but parents were not citizens at the time of birth, e.g., Marco Rubio). The center is people who have both jus soli and jus sanguinis (born on US soil of one or more citizen parents). And the right is those who get their citizenship solely from jus sanguinis (born a citizen abroad to one or more citizen parents, e.g., Ted Cruz.)Facts from the Left Set:
Facts from the Right Set:
Your proposed intersection (the center):
What about Fact 2 from the Left Set? What about Fact 1 from the Right Set?
Failure to separate the individual facts is a cause of error.
Legal residence of the parents has no significance. And the 14th Amendment does not address the subject of natural born citizenship.
Article 2, section 1, clause 5 of the Constitution requires the President to be a natural born citizen. The term “natural born citizen” is defined by natural law prevailing at the time the Constitution was written. Neither Rubio nor Cruz are eligible to serve as POTUS.
Believe me, Ray, I understand both the facts and the diagrams with absolute clarity.
And the way I’ve presented the situation is correct. If you can’t understand it, or can’t accept it, that’s really your problem, not mine.
And those are irrelevant. Either jus soli or jus sanguinis, by itself, is enough to make a person a citizen by birth, and (as James Bayard said and Chief Justice John Marshall approved) citizenship by birth is sufficient for a person to be, Constitutionally, a "natural born citizen" for Article II Presidential eligibility purposes.
You've got your choice. You can either hold to the birther theory of what a natural born citizen "must" be, or you can hold to the Founding Fathers, our history, our laws, and the Constitution.
You just can't have both.
You haven’t addressed a single point.
Good bye.
Why don't you address a point?
Bayard was a US district attorney for six years before becoming a full time politician.
Compare with Samuel Roberts who you've previously belittled as "little several-counties-judge Samuel Roberts".
Roberts was admitted to the bar of Philadelphia county 1793, was commissioned president judge of the Fifth Judicial District June 2, 1803 and presided until his death in 1820.
While upon the bench for 17 years he wrote and published “Roberts’ Digest of British Statutes in Force in Pennsylvania,” a work well known to the profession, the last edition of which was published in 1847.
What did Roberts say? Read it:
Yeah that's right, mine's bigger than yours. All day any day. All you seem to care about is "authority". Well "my authority is better than yours" Roberts wipes the deck with Bayard.
Sarcasm aside, why don't you address a point? Hmm? You can't. You just throw out "you're a 'birther'" crap.
You don't understand venn diagrams, you cop one and screw it up, and can't even recognize that your position has internal conflicts.
Address a point.
Maybe because I'm sick of bullsh*t?
At this point, I feel like I've "addressed more points" than anyone on the planet.
It doesn't matter. It's like arguing with a stump. I'm convinced at this point that you're simply an idiot birther for whom no amount of facts or evidence will ever make the slightest difference.
In fact, this whole conversation illustrates that exact point.
Compare [Bayard] with Samuel Roberts who you've previously belittled as "little several-counties-judge Samuel Roberts".
There's not really any comparison. The description of Samuel Roberts is pretty accurate.
In fact, how damn hard you have to look to find any biographical information on Roberts at all, illustrates the point.
Roberts had no national legal responsibilities at all. Sure, he wrote a digest of the British laws that SOMEONE ELSE said were in force in Pennsylvania, and commented on them. And yes, his work was popular enough - IN PENNSYLVANIA.
But really, professionally, his scope of responsibility DIDN'T EVEN EXTEND TO THE ENTIRE STATE.
His scope of responsibility, during his entire LIFETIME, was NEVER MORE THAN SEVERAL COUNTIES.
Compare that with Bayard, who was also a lawyer by profession, but who had official UNITED STATES responsibilities as one of our US District Attorneys.
If you just look at their qualifications, and ask: Which of these men would you go to, to ask about a point of NATIONAL law, there's no comparison.
Roberts gave his opinion, which was approved by... NOBODY.
Bayard gave his opinion, which was approved by... Chief Justice John Marshall, the Great Chief Justice of the United States.
In points of the law, it seems almost impossible to come up with anyone more authoritative than Chief Justice Marshall. He dominated the Supreme Court for almost 35 years, starting just 13 years after the adoption of the Constitution.
And yet who do YOU push?
You push the little several-counties judge from Pennsylvania.
You illustrate the worst of birtherism: You pick and choose what the hell authorities you want. It's not based on their authority. It's based on whether you like what they say. And you're more than prepared to throw out the best authorities, and embrace the worst, just so that you can maintain your idiotic birther fantasy.
And this is after the relative authority of the two men has been made perfectly clear through prior discussion.
This is totally clownish. And it illustrates what total, complete ideological HACKS birthers are, how completely opposed to the truth birthers are, and what a waste of time it is even engaging in conversation with people who simply love their STUPID FANTASY and don't want to be bothered with the truth.
Oh: And if you don’t want to be ridiculed, stop being ridiculous.
Dave3200: The term “natural born citizen” is defined by natural law prevailing at the time the Constitution was written.
Isn't Natural Law supposed to be eternal and unchanging? If "natural law" varies with place, time, and public opinion, what differentiates it from any other man-made construct? What is the value of appealing to it?
The term "natural born citizen" is defined by what it meant at the time the Constitution was written.
And it had a definite, specific meaning.
The phrase "natural born" only occurs in ONE context before and at the time the Constitution was written.
Only one.
That of the common law.
And by the common law, all persons born in a country, with very limited exceptions, were - by natural and divine law - members of that country.
Generally speaking, if you were born in England, you were a member of that nation.
And if you were born in a colony, you were a member of that colony.
Because God ordained authorities, and set governments in place. So if you were born under a king, you were subject to that king. If you were born in a realm, you were a member of that realm.
There were a few exceptions, however. If you were born the son of a king or queen who happened to be visiting another country, then your country was that of your royal parents. Also, if your parents were official ambassadors, or members of an invading army, then you were not part of the place where you were born, for similar reasons as that of the children of royalty.
As time went on, the common law, and the Parliament, began to carve out a couple of foreign-birth exceptions as well. First, it was deemed that children of the king, born abroad, were English subjects. Well, that was simply in accordance with the exception that worked the other way around.
Then they decided to grant subjecthood to children born abroad of ordinary English subjects. This wasn't quite consistent with the original doctrine, but quite often people would go abroad, have children, and the children would return to England and live their entire lives there.
So such children were regarded as natural born subjects of England as well.
The same rule was adopted by not one or two, but by all thirteen of the original Colonies, and was in force in all the American States at the time the Constitution was written.
In the first major US citizenship case, Judge Lewis Sandford of New York (Lynch v. Clarke, 1844) reasoned that since the Constitution spoke of natural born citizens, and of citizenship in general, then there must have been an assumed rule for exactly who was and was not a citizen.
He concluded that since the common law rule was in force in every one of the 13 States at the time of the writing and adoption of the Constitution, that was our assumed national rule applied by the Framers and ratifiers of the Constitution.
The US Supreme Court, in 1898, cited Sandford's reasoning approvingly and reached the same conclusion.
That the Framers of the Constitution also believed Congress had the ability to state who, born abroad, was additionally to be regarded as a "natural born citizen" (and thus eligible to the Presidency) is obvious from their actions in the First Congress.
The First Congress and first President promptly passed a law which stated that the children born abroad to US citizens were to be considered as natural born citizens also, as long as their father had ever resided in the United States. (The qualification was obviously included to prevent the creation of generations of American citizens who had never lived here.)
In 1834, James Bayard published A Brief Exposition of the Constitution of the United States. At that time, he stated clearly that it wasn't necessary to be born on US soil in order to be a natural born citizen and eligible to the Presidency. One only had to be a "citizen by birth."
In other words, Bayard specifically stated that people in Ted Cruz's situation were eligible to be President.
Chief Justice John Marshall, the "Great Chief Justice" who dominated the US Supreme Court for 35 years starting just 13 years after the ratification of the Constitution, read Bayard's exposition of the Constitution and wrote him a letter correcting him on a minor point regarding Congress' authority to build postal and military roads.
Aside from that, Chief Justice Marshall said, "I do not recollect a single statement in your book which is not, in my judgment, entirely just."
The statement by Marshall strongly implies that he read the entire book. ("Brief," by the way, meant exactly that: The main body of the book is only 141 pages.)
It seems inconceivable that Chief Justice Marshall would've made such a statement without reading the entire book, and certainly the section on Presidential eligibility would have been at least as important a matter for attention as whether Congress had to ask the States for their permission before building postal and military roads.
So the judgment of the Chief Justice, apparently, is that "natural born citizen" meant "citizen by birth."
This is precisely in accordance with a number of other early authorities that say the qualification for President is that a person must be "born a citizen."
Separately, the distinguished legal expert William Rawle (also later cited by the US Supreme Court on citizenship) wrote that you didn't have to have citizen parents in order to be a natural born citizen: Birth on US soil was enough.
In fact, all major early authorities are in substantial agreement as to the meaning of natural born citizen.
And so are the results of every significant legal case on citizenship.
The meaning came from the common law rule.
It doesn't require both birth on US soil and citizen parents.
It only requires that one be born a citizen.
Therefore, both Marco Rubio (born a US citizen by virtue of birth in the US to non-citizen parents) and Ted Cruz (born a US citizen by virtue of birth abroad to a citizen parent) are natural born citizens, and eligible to the Presidency.
It's supposed to be, but there are different concepts of natural law. There's not one single concept of what natural law is supposed to be.
The kind of natural law that gave us the term natural born citizen derived from the "natural law" concept that if you were born in a particular country, God intended that country to be your country. It didn't matter whether your parents were citizens or not.
And a term that started out referring solely to perceived natural law can be modified over time, through the consideration of new situations not originally considered.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.