But they were Englishmen, and they did write our nation’s founding documents in the same language that was used for English common law. They wrote those documents for the understanding of a people whose national language would be English.
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The Founders WERE NO LONGER ENGLISHMEN the minute the Declaration of Independence was signed. Your inferences that they wrote the laws according to English Common Law and the English language are completely erroneous. The Framers were well educated and spoke other languages fluently. They knew and studied French, Latin, Greek, and other languages, but French was foremost as it was( and still is) the Diplomatic language. French was also the language in which Vattel wrote The Law of Nations. They would have read Vattel as easily as they read anything in English. They wrote the Constitution in he language that MOST Americans of the time would understand.
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“When the United States ceased to be a part of the British empire, and assumed the character of an independent nation, they became subject to that system of rules which reason, morality, and custom had established among civilized nations of Europe, as their public law. . . . The faithful observance of this law is essential to national character. . . .”1385 These words of the Chancellor Kent expressed the view of the binding character of international law that was generally accepted at the time the Constitution was adopted. During the Revolutionary War, Congress took cognizance of all matters arising under the law of nations and professed obedience to that law.1386 Under the Articles of Confederation, it was given exclusive power to appoint courts for the trial of piracies and felonies committed on the high seas, but no provision was made for dealing with offenses against the law of nations.1387 The draft of the Constitution submitted to the Convention of 1787 by its Committee of Detail empowered Congress “to declare the law and punishment of piracies and felonies committed on the high seas, and the punishment of counterfeiting the coin of the United States, and of offences against the law of nations.”1388 In the debate on the floor of the Convention, the discussion turned on the question as to whether the terms, “felonies” and the “law of nations,” were sufficiently precise to be generally understood. The view that these terms were often so vague and indefinite as to require definition eventually prevailed and Congress was authorized to define as well as punish piracies, felonies, and offenses against the law of nations.1389
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1385 1 J. Kent, Commentaries on American Law (New York: 1826), 1.
1386 19 Journals of the Continental Congress, 315, 361 (1912); 20 id. 762; 21 id. 1136–1137, 1158.
1387 Article IX.
1388 2 M. Farrand, The Records of the Federal Convention of 1787 (New Haven: Rev. ed. 1937), 168, 182.
1389 Id., 316.