Regarding Franklin, in 1775 he wrote to Charles Dumas, an editor and journalist in the Netherlands, and thanked him for sending Franklin 3 copies of the newest edition of Vattel (published in French). Franklin commented to Dumas that his personal copy was in heavy demand by the other delegates to the Continental Congress meeting in 1775.
To quote: "I am much obliged by the kind present you have made us of your edition of Vattel. It came to us in good season, when the circumstances of a rising state make it necessary frequently to consult the law of nations. Accordingly that copy, which I kept, (after depositing one in our own public library here, and sending the other to the College of Massachusetts Bay, as you directed,) has been continually in the hands of the members of our Congress, now sitting, who are much pleased with your notes and preface, and have entertained a high and just esteem for their author."
If they were consulting it in 1775, don't you think they might have thought about it in 1787?
Also, Washington himself set a world record for overdue library books, by checking out a copy of Vattel from the NY Public Library, which was not returned for 220 years! He must have thought it worth keeping for reference.
I have a lot of books in my library too but that proves nothing. I tell you what I’m pretty sure the framers all had at their disposal and that was a dictionary.
From Webster’s 1828 dictionary:
native, a: 1. Produced by nature; original; born with the being; natural; not acquired; as native genius; native affections; a native talent or disposition; native cheerfulness; native simplicity.
2. Produced by nature; not factitious or artificial; as native ore; native color.
3. Conferred by birth; as native rights and privileges.
4. Pertaining to the place of birth; as native soil; native country; native graves.
5. Original; that of which any thing is made; as mans native dust.
6. Born with; congenial.
Every single definition of “native” from the authoritative dictionary of the early 1800s gives the word “native” the sense of “natural” or “original” or “born with.”
There is nothing in Webster’s 1828 dictionary to contradict that “native” carried a meaning of “natural” or “at birth.”
If there had been any real distinction between a “native-born” citizen and a “natural-born” one, surely someone would have clarified the distinction. But no. Apparently, EVERYBODY understood that (with the sole exception that children born abroad to US citizens were also “natural born”) the terms meant essentially the same thing.
Minor v. Happersett references the common law, but never mentions the Swiss philosopher Vattel, who you claim gave our Founding Fathers the concept of natural-born citizenship.
Never mind the fact that at the time the Founding Fathers established the country, there really was not and could not have been very much at all in the way of “American common law” (Apuzzo and Donofrio postulate this theory) separate from the common law of the country that all of the Colonies were a part of — England - that had been handed down for centuries.
Never mind the fact, either, that Blackstone’s treatise on English common law was the fundamental text of the law school at William & Mary — our nation’s first law school.
Never mind the fact that Blackstone was quoted by the Founding Fathers some 16 times more frequently than Vattel. Source: http://www.constitution.org/primarysources/influences.html
In spite of overwhelming evidence that the Founding Fathers looked to the English common law far more often than to Vattel, and in spite of the fact that the phrase “natural born” is known to have come from the English common law, you birthers still insists that it was Vattel that the Founding Fathers looked to, and not the English common law.
That is just not logical.