This was purported to be written by James Madison the Grandfather of the US Constitution that was in Alexandria Herald published on October 7, 1811:
http://naturalborncitizen.files.wordpress.com/2011/12/alexandria-herald.pdf
Posted on 04/27/2012 8:24:47 AM PDT by vadum
According to the Constitution, to be eligible for the presidency (or vice presidency), a person must be a “natural born citizen” of the United States. The purpose of this restriction is to prevent a foreigner from becoming the nation’s chief executive.
How can people become U.S. citizens? There are just two ways; either they are born citizens or they become citizens later in life. In the first case, anyone who is a citizen by nature of his birth is a “natural born citizen.” In the second case, anyone who is a citizen of another country at birth, but is granted U.S. citizenship sometime afterward, is a naturalized citizen.
For example, John McCain, though born in Panama, is eligible for the presidency, because he became a citizen at birth. Similarly, had Gen. George Meade sought the presidency, he would have been eligible because, though born in Spain, he was a U.S. citizen by nature of his birth. Any non-naturalized U.S. citizen over the age of thirty-five with fourteen years of residence can be President of the United States.
Sadly, this common-sense, logical approach does not dissuade some conservative pundits from inventing a new constitutional requirement for the presidency. Despite the plain meaning of the text, they claim that, to be eligible, a person’s parents must also be U.S. citizens. A few even assert that one’s parents must also be natural born citizens. I’ll spare you a recitation of their nonsense about “native born” or Emerich de Vattel or whatnot. Finding things in the Constitution that are not there is for Democrats!
Now that Mitt Romney has become the presumptive Republican nominee, there is speculation that the junior senator from Florida will be his running mate. Marco Rubio’s parents were from Cuba and did not become U.S. citizens until he was four years old. Voices from the fringe are claiming that this means Rubio is not eligible – and they’re wrong.
Marco Rubio was born is Miami, Florida. He is, therefore, a natural born citizen of the United States. Per the Constitution, the citizenship status of his parents (or grandparents or anyone but himself) is irrelevant.
Let’s look at U.S. political history for more proof. Were there other instances of a presidential or vice presidential nominee with a foreign-born parent? You betcha!
The first presidential nominee of the Republican Party, in 1856, was John Charles Fremont. He was born in South Carolina to an American mother and a French father. Jean Charles Fremon was born a French citizen, near Lyon, France. He was not a U.S. citizen at the time of his son’s birth and never did become a citizen. Abraham Lincoln campaigned for Fremont. All the founders of the Republican Party campaigned for Fremont. One would be hard-pressed to find any suggestion at the time that Fremont’s birth made him ineligible for the presidency.
The seventh vice presidential nominee of the Republican Party, Chester Arthur, was born in Vermont to an American mother and a foreign-born father. William Arthur was born a British citizen – in County Antrim, Ireland – who did not become a U.S. citizen until his son was fourteen years old.
John Fremont, George Meade, Chester Arthur, John McCain, Marco Rubio – all eligible for the presidency. Republicans should not allow themselves to be distracted away from contesting the 2012 presidential campaign on the real issues.
Michael Zak is a popular speaker to Republican organizations around the country. Back to Basics for the Republican Party is his acclaimed history of the GOP, cited by Clarence Thomas in a Supreme Court decision. His Grand Old Partisan website celebrates more than fifteen decades of Republican heroes and heroics. See www.grandoldpartisan.com for more information.
That is the big question as what type of citizenship does birth under a protectorate status convey? What if his parents were born in Puerto Rico, also a protectorate?
According to this report by the Congressional Research Service, being born in a Protectorate satisfies the requirement to be born on US soil, so why would it not satisfy the same for his parents?
http://www.scribd.com/doc/74176180/Qualifications-for-President-and-the-%E2%80%9CNatural-Born%E2%80%9D-Citizenship-Eligibility-Requirement
Second, if memory serves me correctly, Chester Arthur burned his records shortly before his death, “cleverly” concealing a lot of things from posterity.
You are not thinking in legal terms. Stealing beer is ALREADY an established crime. Serving as president with a non-US citizen Kenyan father is NOT. Very basic legal factoid.
You’ve identified the whole problem of trying to integrate sovereign Indian tribes: national loyalty.
This NBC stipulation is grossly unfair to those unfortunate babies born from a test tube via anonymous sperm donor. How to prove the father is a citizen?
If you could somehow combine a natural birth thread with a marijuana causes brain damage thread you might have the ultimate FR “discussion.”
If England decided that any U.S. citizen at age 18 was eligible for English citizenship - would that render every American ineligible for the Presidency?
If China made a law that anyone with over 50% Chinese ancestry was automatically a citizen of China - would that render ineligible all Chinese Americans?
1) naturalized, (foreign born)
2) natural, (born in USA, parents maybe or maybe not citizens) and;
3) natural born, (both parents citizens at time of birth, whether naturalized or natural)
If that is not so, there was no reason to differentiate the categories within the Constitution.
There is no wording within the Constitution that differentiates category 2 from category 3.
“Macduff was from his mother’s womb
Untimely ripped.”
- William Shakespeare, Macbeth, 5.7
I don’t accept that the definition of “B” (subject) is dispositive in defining “A” (natural born citizen).
The Supreme Court decision that I believe you are referring to is Minor v. Happersett, which to my knowledge is the only one to have defined “natural born citizen”. If this is part of the holding, as has been asserted, and not dictum, then it would be dispositive in construing the term “natural born citizen”.
I don’t see how the 14th amendment amended the definition of “natural born citizen”, since the term “natural born citizen” was not used in the 14th amendment. I do note that the Citizenship Act of 1790 extended the status of “natural born citizen” to people both of whose parents were US citizens, even if those people were born at sea or outside of the US. That law was superceded by the Naturalization Act of 1795, which did not use the term “natural born citizen”. However, one could use the 1790 act to argue that congress, in promulgating that law, understood that a “natural born citizen” had to have two parents who were citizens (unless born before the US was organized).
Yes, that is the REASON they put “Natural Born” into Article II, BUT the law is the law. We must go by the “text” of the law. In other words, allegiances as defined by “Natural Born” You can't extrapolate to your own definition of allegiance.
By defining NBC as Native born with citizen parentS, they have covered all bases. You can wonder, “what about this?”
“what about that?” ad infinitum. Forget that. Born in USA? By citizen parentS? DONE! If you say “yes” to both, you are NBC. If you say “no” to either, you are not NBC.
If you question whether you are a “native” citizen (citizen at/by birth) because of being born on a reservation, look into that. (I am sure reservations are still IN the US)
If you question the citizenship of your parents, you need to look into that yourself.
The law is clear. It needs no clarification in my mind. But if the “parent”S” status needs to be run by SCOTUS, so be it.
“There is a case to be made that they did have protectorate citizenship.”
No there isn’t.
Cuba was an ‘unincorporated territory’ and it’s people were not granted ‘U.S. citizenship’.
“The provisions for governing American possessions as well as their status vis-à-vis the United States have varied greatly over time. A series of Supreme Court decisions in 1900 and 1901 known collectively as the Insular Cases distinguished between two groups of U.S. territories: incorporated and unincorporated. Incorporated territories such as Hawai’i followed the path taken by other contiguous portions of the United States toward eventual statehood and citizenship for the inhabitants. Unincorporated territories, the Court held, were “appurtenant and belonging to the United States, but not a part of the United States.” Residents of unincorporated territories were not granted U.S. citizenship.”
Read more: http://www.answers.com/topic/protectorates-and-dependencies#ixzz1tG65kGGp
That is the big question as what type of citizenship does birth under a protectorate status convey? What if his parents were born in Puerto Rico, also a protectorate?
According to this report by the Congressional Research Service, being born in a Protectorate satisfies the requirement to be born on US soil, so why would it not satisfy the same for his parents?
http://www.scribd.com/doc/74176180/Qualifications-for-President-and-the-%E2%80%9CNatural-Born%E2%80%9D-Citizenship-Eligibility-Requirement
But they were born on this soil also, so they would be NBC and no need for the 14th...
Before revisiting Minor, we must revisit Wong Kim Ark, 169 U.S. 649 (1898) to review a clearly erroneous statement made by Justice Gray concerning the prior holding in the Minor case:
“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.’ “ (Wong Kim Ark at 655.)
This unfortunate remark by Justice Gray contains a clearly erroneous statement. The Supreme Court in Minor did not construe the 14th Amendment as to the issue of citizenship. Gray is absolutely wrong.
The Court in Minor construed Article 2 Section 1, not the 14th Amendment. For over a century, it has been wrongly assumed that the Court in Minor did construe the 14th Amendment, and that the holding of Minor was later superseded by Wong Kim Ark. This is not correct.
A more careful reading of the Supreme Court’s opinion in Minor makes it clear that it did not construe the 14th Amendment with regard to the citizenship of the woman who wished to vote. The question presented was whether, since the adoption of the 14th Amendment, women had gained the right to vote.
The Supreme Court in Minor held that nowhere in the Constitution, including the 14th Amendment, was anyone, man or woman, granted a right to vote. And it was only this part of the Minor case which was superseded by the 19th Amendment.
The other issue decided by the Court in Minor required the Supreme Court to determine if the woman was, in fact, a US citizen. As to this determination, the Court did not construe the 14th Amendment. In fact, the Court specifically avoided construing the 14th Amendment with regard to her citizenship. Instead, the Supreme Court in Minor chose to construe Article 2 Section 1:
“There is no doubt that women may be citizens. They are persons, and by the fourteenth amendment ‘all persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof ‘ are expressly declared to be ‘citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.’ But, in our opinion, it did not need this amendment to give them that position …
“The fourteenth amendment did not affect the citizenship of women any more than it did of men. In this particular, therefore, the rights of Mrs. Minor do not depend upon the amendment. She has always been a citizen from her birth, and entitled to all the privileges and immunities of citizenship. The amendment prohibited the State, of which she is a citizen, from abridging any of her privileges and immunities as a citizen of the United States; but it did not confer citizenship on her. That she had before its adoption.
If the right of suffrage is one of the necessary privileges of a citizen of the United States, then the constitution and laws of Missouri confining it to men are in violation of the Constitution of the United States, as amended, and consequently void. The direct question is, therefore, presented whether all citizens are necessarily voters.
JUDICIAL RESTRAINTJUDICIAL RESTRAINT
It’s important to note that the Supreme Court in Minor did not hold that all women born in the US were citizens. Only those born to citizen parents in the US were deemed to be citizens by the Court in Minor.
Since the Court was not required to construe the 14th Amendment – as to Mrs. Minor’s citizenship – the Court refrained from doing so. Instead, the Court construed Article 2 Section 1 as an independent ground by which the Court determined that Mrs. Minor was a natural-born citizen since she had been born in the US to parents who were citizens.
Those outside the natural-born citizen “class” were subject to doubt regarding US citizenship. And the Court in Minor exercised judicial restraint by avoiding that issue. When Wong Kim Ark was decided in 1898, some of those doubts were resolved in favor of US citizenship for those persons not in the class of natural-born citizens. But that case did not open the class of natural-born citizens to include persons born in the US without citizen parents.
With regard to this being binding precedent, the important point here is that Virginia Minor’s citizenship had to be established by the Court before it could move on to the voting issue. Establishing her citizenship was part of the holding. Had Mrs. Minor not been determined by the Supreme Court to be a US citizen, the Court would not have reached the issue of whether US citizens are granted a right to vote. The Court would have exercised the same judicial restraint it exercised in avoiding the 14th Amendment issue. On this point, the Court stated:
“Thus, by the Constitution, the judicial power of the United States is made to extend to controversies between citizens of different states. Under this, it has been uniformly held that the citizenship necessary to give the courts of the United States jurisdiction of a cause must be affirmatively shown on the record. Its existence as a fact may be put in issue and tried. If found not to exist, the case must be dismissed.”
WONG KIM ARK DID NOT EXPAND THE CLASS OF NATURAL BORN CITIZENS.
The Court in Wong Kim Ark did not expand the class of natural-born citizens defined in Minor. The simplest way to put it is thus:
If Wong Kim Ark had been a natural-born citizen, then the Supreme Court would never have reached the 14th Amendment issue (just as it didn’t reach it in Minor.)
That is the simplest way to accurately state the issue. Read it again:
If Wong Kim Ark had been a natural-born citizen, then the Court would never have reached the 14th Amendment issue (just as it didn’t reach it in Minor.
) Since Wong Kim Ark didn’t fit into the class of natural-born citizens as defined by Minor, the Court looked to the 14th Amendment to grant him US citizenship.
HOLDING EQUALS PRECEDENT
The direct holding of the Supreme Court in Minor set a binding precedent. Those pretending that the Supreme Court’s direct construction and definition (in Minor) of the natural-born citizen clause is dicta are mistaken. They need to review the first two points of the syllabus, which state:
“1. The word “citizen ” is often used to convey the idea of membership in a nation.
2. In that sense, women, if born of citizen parents within the jurisdiction of the United States, have always been considered citizens of the United states, as much so before the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution as since.” (Emphasis added.)
Check the words “if born of citizen parents” again. They are stated at the very top of the syllabus and more than once in the Opinion of the Court. This is a direct holding of the case. It is clearly precedent. For it not to be precedent, the Court could not have held that Mrs. Minor was a US citizen. But since that determination was part of the holding, the grounds by which they made that determination are precedent, not dicta.
It’s important to note that the Supreme Court in Minor did not hold that all women born in the US were citizens. Only those born to citizen parents in the US were deemed to be citizens by the Court in Minor.
Since the Court was not required to construe the 14th Amendment – as to Mrs. Minor’s citizenship – the Court refrained from doing so. Instead, the Court construed Article 2 Section 1 as an independent ground by which the Court determined that Mrs. Minor was a natural-born citizen since she had been born in the US to parents who were citizens.
Those outside the natural-born citizen “class” were subject to doubt regarding US citizenship. And the Court in Minor exercised judicial restraint by avoiding that issue. When Wong Kim Ark was decided in 1898, some of those doubts were resolved in favor of US citizenship for those persons not in the class of natural-born citizens. But that case did not open the class of natural-born citizens to include persons born in the US without citizen parents.
With regard to this being binding precedent, the important point here is that Virginia Minor’s citizenship had to be established by the Court before it could move on to the voting issue. Establishing her citizenship was part of the holding. Had Mrs. Minor not been determined by the Supreme Court to be a US citizen, the Court would not have reached the issue of whether US citizens are granted a right to vote. The Court would have exercised the same judicial restraint it exercised in avoiding the 14th Amendment issue. On this point, the Court stated:
“Thus, by the Constitution, the judicial power of the United States is made to extend to controversies between citizens of different states. Under this, it has been uniformly held that the citizenship necessary to give the courts of the United States jurisdiction of a cause must be affirmatively shown on the record. Its existence as a fact may be put in issue and tried. If found not to exist, the case must be dismissed.”
The problem is not whether the parents were "citizens" at the time of the candidate's birth, but whether the parents were both "under the Jurisdiction of the United States." Rubio's parents became permanent residents under US Law the second they set foot on US soil and requested asylum. This was in accordance with the law. Rubio's parents had no country to return to. Their intention from the day they set foot on American soil was to make the US their domicile and to become citizens (which they did).
Jindal's parents were both here on Student Visas and therefore were subject to immediate deportation without a hearing and they did not place themselves under the Jurisdiction of the United States by applying for permanent residency or citizenship until after Jindal was born. Both of Jindal's parents were "subjects" of the Sovereign Country of India at the time of his birth and were not "subjects" of the United States.
Rubio's parents, by law, both became "subjects" of the United States immediately upon setting their feet on US Soil.
Therefore Rubio is a Natural Born Citizen of the United States.
Jindal was born a subject of the Country of India and therefore he cannot be a "natural born citizen" of the United States.
At no time in Rubio's life was he ever a citizen or subject of any country other than the United States.
Nor presently does the establishment of the democrat party find obama's "birth circumstances to be a constitutional barrier to his becoming President of the USA."
All that means is that any political party would be happy to have a piss-fir stump elected, if he were their guy.
Political parties have the well-being of their parties at heart. The well-being of the Republic falls a distant second.
So glad you brought this up - beware of sharks in sweet smiling boys clothes.
About Chester Arthur
Nobody knew about his father...
He hid that wee fact...
and Chester himself may have been boorn in Canada and not Vermont
and funny that the author chose to leave out Willard Mitt Romney with his Mexico born father George..
Of course under that theory they would not have been NBC either, but since no former slave ever ran for the Presidency the point is moot.
Thank you. bttt
Congress could “deem” Rubio an NBC like they did McCain during the 2008 campaign, slickly taking the eye off the guy with a Kenyan father (maybe) and under-aged mother.
Actually the reason the 14th Amendment was required was because of the Supreme Court’s Dred Scott decision. Roger Taney in writing the majority opinion basically said a black person(slave or free) was not, had never been, and could never be a citizen of the United States. 14th made that ruling mute.
This was purported to be written by James Madison the Grandfather of the US Constitution that was in Alexandria Herald published on October 7, 1811:
http://naturalborncitizen.files.wordpress.com/2011/12/alexandria-herald.pdf
Sorry mute = moot
Article 1, Section 2 - delineating the requirements for a person to become a member of the House of Representatives [emphasis added].
No person shall be a Senator who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty Years, and been nine Years a Citizen of the United States, and who shall not, when elected, be an Inhabitant of that State for which he shall be chosen.
Article 1, Section 3 - delineating the requirements for a person to become a member of the Senate [emphasis added].
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; neither shall any Person be eligible to that Office who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty-five Years, and been fourteen Years a Resident within the United States.
Article 2, Section 1 - delineating the requirements for a person to become President of the United States [emphasis added].
____________________________________________
The author of this piece is quite clearly NOT able familiar with the most basic of legal principles (i.e. that words in a statute have meaning), and is quite possibly not able to comprehend simple English. As the very words of the Constitution state, there is a DIFFERENT standard for one to become a member of either house of Congress on the one hand, versus that necessary to become a President. Since the main body of the Constitution was written by the same person in 1787, ratified by the Constitutional Convention of 1787 and ratified unanimously by the then-existing states of the Union between 1787 and 1789, it is beyond any question that the differing textual requirements are there for a reason. I would submit that the reason is because the drafters of the Constitution wanted to be as sure as was humanly possible that any future POTUS would be loyal to this country, and ONLY to this country - by dint of not only being a citizen, not only having been a citizen from birth, but by having both of his parents be citizens (i.e. of undivided loyalty) at the time that the future POTUS was born, so that this person would likely never have experienced divided loyalties. Of course, that is just my supposition, and is frankly irrelevant - all that matters is the words, and their meaning at the time.
The meaning of "Natural Born Citizen" at the time that the Constitution was drafted is defined by the Common Law of that era and, as many have pointed out here and elsewhere, that means being born in this country (or under its jurisdiction) to parentS who are citizens at the time of your birth.
I am a NBC, since I was born in NYC to 2 citizen-parents. My children are not, since my wife/their mother was not yet a U.S. citizen - and the fact that she is now a U.S. citizen does not change that fact barring a Constitutional Amendment.
In conclusion, the writer of the article above is "full of shit" (that's a technical legal term roughly translated as "doesn't know WTF he's talking about" or, alternatively, "dead wrong").
It is a given that the undefined terms in the Constitution are defined in the English Common Law that was the legal heritage of this nation. Literally thousands of Supreme Court cases over the last 200+ years will back that up.
Minor v. Happersett says that natural born citizens are “children born in a country, of parents who were its citizens”. It does not explicitly state that the parents had to have been its citizens at the time of the birth of the child, and therefore an argument can be made that a person born in the US to people who subsequently because US citizens became a natural born citizen when his parents became US citizens. I have not seen this analysis before, and perhaps it is flawed, but I believe it is not inconsistent with the language of the holding in Minor.
Rubio’s father did become a US citizen following Marco’s birth; to my knowledge Barack Hussein Obama I never did become a US citizen.
Son #1 is NBC because you are, and son #2 is, too, because of your citizenship and where he was born.
The supposed requirement that the parents both be citizens is a fiction the birthers invented after the 2008 election. In their frustration at having been utterly unable to prove Obama was born abroad, they (Leo Donofrio) cooked up the Vattel nonsense, in hopes the legal route would succeed where the factual didn't.
As Zak points out, Lincoln and the original GOP didn't buy it:
Let’s look at U.S. political history for more proof. Were there other instances of a presidential or vice presidential nominee with a foreign-born parent? You betcha!The first presidential nominee of the Republican Party, in 1856, was John Charles Fremont. He was born in South Carolina to an American mother and a French father. Jean Charles Fremon was born a French citizen, near Lyon, France. He was not a U.S. citizen at the time of his son’s birth and never did become a citizen. Abraham Lincoln campaigned for Fremont. All the founders of the Republican Party campaigned for Fremont. One would be hard-pressed to find any suggestion at the time that Fremont’s birth made him ineligible for the presidency.
And there is no way the US Supreme Court is ever going to buy it, either. They will go with the common sense idea of what NBC is. During the 2008 election, Obama's parentage was not only known, but had been a celebrated aspect of his biography ever since his 2004 keynote address at the Donk convention. And, except for the loons claiming he was born in Mombasa to a woman supposedly too young to pass on citizenship, no one questioned his eligibility.
Not only that, but after a minor flub in the noon-time oath taking, the Chief Justice repeated the ceremony the following evening in the Map Room, just to make sure (LOL):
 Chief Justice John Roberts, just making sure |
Stare decisis et non quieta movere.
(For those of you in Rio Linda, Chief Justice Roberts is a conservative Republican appointed by GWB.)
The pirate Roberts was placed where he is to stall the hearing of the issue at SCOTUS. Byt the time little barry bastard commie is into his second term, the court will be leaning so far left that the Constitution and the founders’ intentions will be a buried issue. Fiat ruling will be the standard, just as fiat executive orders are little bastard’s standards now.
Interesting to know (and no, Obama’s father didn’t become a citizen, he moved back to Kenya shortly after O’s birth and per Dreams of My Father, he only visited O in the US once and it was just a quick meeting).
A silver lining...
Any Republican that supports the DREAM act does not belong any where near the White House. If Romney had any cajones, he would get Gov Brewer to be his running mate.
They could try to “deem” Rubio all they want and it still wouldn’t make it so. And Resolution 511 is a non-binding resolution, which holds the same non-effect as Neil Abercrombie’s 50th Hawaiian anniversary congressional resolution that declared Obama was born in Hawaii (LoL) that is written between the lines of exulting Diamond Head and Don Ho. ...LoL.
Uh.....no!
Your analysis was very well-written and thoughtful. Thank you.
just amend the constitution and create a third form of citizen which requires at either the mother or father be a citizen of the usa.
Apply it to all future births and the debate is done.
When did George Romney become a US citizen?
I fear that you are correct...though I hope and pray that the People never forget the reason why the 2nd Amendment was proposed and ratified (by a bunch of former revolutionaries, FYI).
“That’s what ‘natural’ means...”
Natural in the case of Natural Born Citizen means that one’s citizenship flows naturally from the citizenship of your parents.......none of the people mentioned in the article meet that definition. Sorry.
My point about the 14th is that it redefined who was a US citizen. Therefore a Court decision is needed to determine whether it made any difference in who was NBC.
But that is perhaps irrelevant since the original definition of NBC has not been defined.
I do find it significant that in the Wong Kim Ark decision the Court quote Blackstone extensively and referenced common law as the basic principles applying to US citizenship. If I remember correctly, one of the dissenting opinions stated that he was dissenting partially because otherwise “coolies” would be eligible to become president, at least implying that he would be NBC.
It is relevant that not only was neither of Wong Kim Ark’s parents citizens, as natives of China they were at the time not capable of being naturalized.
BTW, I agree none of this is dispositive. Which is why we need a Court decision.
You forgot to write the People’s Republic of Boulder so definitely not a NBC ;-)
I agree with your analysis up to the point at which you assert that the parents have to have been citizens at the time of birth of the person in question. As I read the Constitution and the Minor case, one can argue that if the person was born in the US and the parents became US citizens prior to the moment when the citizenship of the child has to be determined, then the child is a natural born citizen: In other words, the status of a child can change from “citizen” to “natural born citizen” after he is born, when his parents become US citizens.
As I wrote elsewhere, I just thought of this analysis and have not seen it elsewhere, and perhaps there is other case law (or something in Vattell or elsewhere) that discredits it, but I don’t find it inconsistent with either the constitution or the Minor case to say that one can become a natural born citizen if (a) he is born in the US and (b) his parents later became US citizens.
Yes, everyone knew that Obama’s father was never a US citizen in 2008 - but that substantive issue was never able to be brought up in federal court, as all of the courts said that anyone who brought up the issue lacked standing to do so. The simple fact is that we’ve NEVER had any real safeguard to make sure that a person running for President or Congress was actually eligible.
That bit about Lincoln backing Fremont is what is known as a “red herring.” Lincoln was a politician, not a Supreme Court Justice ruling on an active case or controversy. His (and his Party’s) narrow self-interest in 1856 do not - CANNOT - override the Constitution.
Undefined terms in any law are defined by the prevailing law of the jurisdiction at the time the law is passed. The prevailing law at the time the Constitution was passed/ratified was the English Common Law, which was the basis of our entire legal system. Literally thousands of Supreme Court cases have confirmed that over the course of the last 200+ years.
The “Common sense” meaning of any words now is not necessarily the same as the common sense meaning of those same words at the time a law (or Constitution) became the law of the land. When in doubt, our judicial system ALWAYS looks to the ORIGINAL meaning of words or phrases.
In short, I think that you are incorrect...which doesn’t mean that I wouldn’t agree with using the “common sense” meaning of “natural born citizen” if we were drafting an amendment to the Constitution. However, we are NOT doing so, and are left to interpret words that are 225 years old AS THEY WERE UNDERSTOOD AT THAT TIME.
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