It is obvious from the legal language they used - “natural born citizen”, which is a term that was used in law back then interchangeably with “natural born subject”. In the years prior and right after the Constitution was written, the Mass legislature bounced back and forth between the terms in their citizenship laws and proceedings.
NBC wasn’t something pulled out of thin air. It was used interchangeably with natural born subject, and NBS has a well established legal meaning: born within the realm. The WKA decision discusses it at great length.
NBC did NOT come from Vattel. The first translation of Vattel to use that term was made 10 years AFTER the Constitution. Nor was NBC a term made up out of thin air.
Many of the men who wrote the Constitution were lawyers, as were most of the members of the legislatures that ratified the Constitution. When lawyers use a legal term in a legal document, it is safe to assume they are using its known legal meaning. And as the WKA decision wrote:
“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.”
http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/historics/USSC_CR_0169_0649_ZO.html
Let me repeat for emphasis:
“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.”
‘It is obvious from the legal language they used - “natural born citizen”, which is a term that was used in law back then interchangeably with “natural born subject”.’
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In addition, they also required only fourteen years of U.S. residency, which means that someone 35 years of age who has spent 60% of his life living overseas will face no Constitutional obstacle on the grounds of possible divided loyalty.
So you have no quotes. You simply have your steadfast belief that natural born citizen means ‘any brat dropped on a particular piece of real estate regardless of parentage or allegiance’. I’ve seen presentations like yours that make a solid case for NBC meaning the child of two citizen parents. If the evidence were cut and dried one side or the other could/would offer a quote directly from one of the Framers. But you did not, nor have I seen a direct quote supporting the other side.
Until I see that quote, I will remain convinced that two-parents is what was meant/intended. This is because I actually grasp the concept of divided loyalty. It isn’t a difficult concept to understand, but I have yet to meet a single soil-only person who gets it. Your comments on England made me shake my head. If what you said genuinely represents your full grasp of ‘divided loyalty’ then no wonder you think geographical location is everything. I’d certainly like to believe you have more insight into Obama’s particular situation than that, but so far you’ve provided no indication that you do—and nor has any other soil only proponent. For whatever reason, they either cannot or simply refuse to grasp the concept. In one case it is a mental/psychological limitation, in the other a choice, but in either case it closes the discussion. You can’t, for instance, intelligently discuss diseases w a person who doesn’t grasp the concept of germs. It would be a foregone waste of time.
If ever a soil only person demonstrates true insight into the issue of divided loyalty, and is able to discuss it intelligently and factually in Obama’s case specifically, I will be inclined to listen to whatever else they have to say. As long as they demonstrate zero—literally zero—grasp of the concept, all I can say is sure, go ahead and make it all about the technicality of the physical location of a particular patch of dirt. That is evidently the best you can do, so embrace it w everything you’ve got.
1795, Zephaniah Swift, US Congressman and future Chief Justice of the Connecticut Supreme Court published, “A System of the Laws of the State of Connecticut: in Six Books".
In what is the first legal treatise published in the United States, Swift wrote, “The children of aliens born in this state are considered as natural born subjects and have the same rights with the rest of the citizens.”
So the question would be, "How did the Framers inform the citizens of Connecticut that the term natural born had a new meaning?"
http://tinyurl.com/ajnxafe