Where is Natural Born Citizen defined?
See the Supreme Court case ‘Minor vs Happersett’
Suppose a state passed a law that gave a definition of a natural born citizen (NBC) and started enforcing that law in federal elections held in their state. The Democrats would definitely sue and try to overturn the law in state court. If the state court declined to hear the case the Democrats would move up the chain. Eventually it might end up before the USSC. I think the gist of their suit would be that elections for federal offices must be uniform throughout the country or else you have a violation of the equal protection clause. Also, they would claim that the definition of NBC is not up to a state legislature to set. But resolving such a claim means that the state definition of NBC would have to be compared to a standard definition of NBC to test for constitutionality. If there is no standard definition, then you can’t claim the state definition is not constitutional. If there is one the USSC will have to lay out their definition in the opinion. And then you have a standard definition, which the Democrats don’t want at all.
Read section 212 in this legal treatise: https://lonang.com/library/reference/vattel-law-of-nations/vatt-119/
Also see various SCOTUS cases cited and explained at Article II Facts: http://www.art2superpac.com/issues.html
Also this White Paper: http://www.kerchner.com/protectourliberty/The-Who-What-When-Where-Why-and-How-of-NBC-Term-in-Constitution.pdf
The point of the article by Roger Ogden is that one or two state’s legislature should pass a law and have the governor sign it. Then it would likely get challenged and thus eventually the U.S. Supreme Court would have to stop ducking the issue and decide its definition. Justice Thomas says SCOTUS is avoiding the issue. So they will have to be forced to do its job. This would be one way to get them to do it.
Also swing on by and read the discussion between Roger Ogden and commenters ongoing at the author’s Patriot Fire site: https://patriot-fire.net/2023/03/06/solution-for-natural-born-citizen-requirement-for-president/
In English Common Law in 1776, which passed to all 13 states at independence, the term Natural Born Subject (which became Natural Born Citizen at independence) had a very specific definition per Blackstone. Every lawyer in the newly independent states, including those at the Constitutional convention would have owned a copy of Blackstone’s Law Dictionary and knew what the phrase meant:
https://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/a1_8_4_citizenships1.html
“ The first and most obvious division of the people is into aliens and natural-born subjects. Natural-born subjects are such as are born within the dominions of the crown of England, that is, within the ligeance, or as it is generally called, the allegiance of the king; and aliens, such as are born out of it. Allegiance is the tie, or ligamen, which binds the subject to the king, in return for that protection which the king affords the subject. The thing itself, or substantial part of it, is founded in reason and the nature of government; the name and the form are derived to us from our Gothic ancestors.”
Any person born within the boundaries of the United States is a natural born citizen of the United States, period. This is regardless of their parentage, as defined by both the Common Law and the Constitution. Any person born elsewhere in the world who has at least one US citizen parent is also a natural born citizen, because the laws of the United States state they have citizenship from birth.
The only Americans who are not natural born citizens are those who were naturalized after birth either by adults applying for citizenship, or minor foreign born children who became citizens when their parents were naturalized, or who were adopted by American parents.
Any other definition, such as the Swiss legal scholar Vattel is foreign to the Common Law and does not apply to the Constitution and Laws of the United States of America.
“Where is Natural Born Citizen defined?”
Wong Kim Ark gave a detailed examination in 1898:
“I. The fundamental principle of the common law with regard to English nationality was birth within the allegiance—also called ‘ligealty,’ ‘obedience,’ ‘faith,’ or ‘power’—of the king. The principle embraced all persons born within the king’s allegiance, and subject to his protection. Such allegiance and protection were mutual,—as expressed in the maxim, ‘Protectio trahit subjectionem, et subjectio protectionem,’—and were not restricted to natural-born subjects and naturalized subjects, or to those who had taken an oath of allegiance; but were predicable of aliens in amity, so long as they were within the kingdom. Children, born in England, of such aliens, were therefore natural-born subjects. But the children, born within the realm, of foreign ambassadors, or the children of alien enemies, born during and within their hostile occupation of part of the king’s dominions, were not natural-born subjects, because not born within the allegiance, the obedience, or the power, or, as would be said at this day, within the jurisdiction, of the king.
10
This fundamental principle, with these qualifications or or explanations of it, was clearly. though quaintly, stated in the leading case known as ‘Calvin’s Case,’ or the ‘Case of the Postnati,’ decided in 1608, after a hearing in the exchequer chamber before the lord chancellor and all the judges of England, and reported by Lord Coke and by Lord Ellesmere. Calvin’s Case, 7 Coke, 1, 4b-6a, 18a, 18b; Ellesmere, Postnati, 62-64; s. c. 2 How. St. Tr. 559, 607, 613-617, 639, 640, 659, 679.
11
The English authorities ever since are to the like effect. Co. Litt. 8a, 128b; Lord Hale, in Harg. Law Tracts, 210, and in 1 Hale, P. C. 61, 62; 1 Bl. Comm. 366, 369, 370, 374; 4 Bl. Comm. 74, 92; Lord Kenyon, in Doe v. Jones, 4 Term R. 300, 308; Cockb. Nat. 7; Dicey, Confl. Laws, pp. 173-177, 741.
12
In Udny v. Udny (1869) L. R. 1 H. L. Sc. 441, the point decided was one of inheritance, depending upon the question whether the domicile of the father was in England or in Scotland, he being in either alternative a British subject. Lord Chancellor Hatherley said: ‘The question of naturalization and of allegiance is distinct from that of domicile.’ Page 452. Lord Westbury, in the passage rei ed on by the counsel for the United States, began by saying: ‘The law of England, and of almost all civilized countries, ascribes to each individual at his birth two distinct legal states or conditions,—one by virtue of which he becomes the subject of some particular country, binding him by the tie of natural allegiance, and which may be called his political status; another by virtue of which he has ascribed to him the character of a citizen of some particular country, and as such is possessed of certain municipal rights, and subject to certain obligations, which latter character is the civil status or condition of the individual, and may be quite different from his political status.’ And then, while maintaining that the civil status is universally governed by the single principle of domicile (domicilium), the criterion established by international law for the purpose of determining civil status, and the basis on which ‘the personal rights of the party—that is to say, the law which determines his majority or minority, his marriage, succession, testacy, or intestacy— must depend,’ he yet distinctly recognized that a man’s political status, his country (patria), and his ‘nationality,—that is, natural allegiance,’—’may depend on different laws in different countries.’ Pages 457, 460. He evidently used the word ‘citizen,’ not as equivalent to ‘subject,’ but rather to ‘inhabitant’; and had no thought of impeaching the established rule that all persons born under British dominion are natural-born subjects.
13
Lord Chief Justice Cockburn, in the same year, reviewing the whole matter, said: ‘By the common law of England, every person born within the dominions of the crown, no matter whether of English or of foreign parents, and, in the latter case, whether the parents were settled, or merely temporarily sojourning, in the country, was an English subject, save only the children of foreign ambassadors (who were excepted because their fathers carried their own nationality with them), or a child born to a foreigner during the hostile occupation of any part of the territories of England. No effect appears to have been given to descent as a source of nationality.’ Cockb. Nat. 7.
14
Mr. Dicey, in his careful and thoughtful Digest of the Law of England with Reference to the Conflict of Laws, published in 1896, states the following propositions, his principal rules being printed below in italics: “British subject’ means any person who owes permanent allegiance to the crown. ‘Permanent’ allegiance is used to distinguish the allegiance of a British subject from the allegiance of an alien, who, because he is within the British dominions, owes ‘temporary’ allegiance to the crown. ‘Natural-born British subject’ means a British subject who has become a British subject at the moment of his birth.’ ‘Subject to the exceptions hereinafter mentioned, any person who (whatever the nationality of his parents) is born within the British dominions is a natural-born British subject. This rule contains the leading principle of English law on the subject of British nationality.’ The exceptions afterwards mentioned by Mr. Dicey are only these two: ‘(1) Any person who (his father being an alien enemy) is born in a part of the British dominions, which at the time of such person’s birth is in hostile occupation, is an alien.’ ‘(2) Any person whose father (being an alien) is at the time of such person’s birth an ambassador or other diplomatic agent accredited to the crown by the sovereign of a foreign state is (though born within the British dominions) an alien.’ And he adds: ‘The exceptional and unimportant instances in which birth within the British dominions does not of itself confer British nationality are due to the fact that, though at common law nationality or allegiance in substance depended on the place of a person’s birth, it in theory at least depended, not upon the locality of a man’s birth, but upon his being born within the jurisdiction and allegiance of the king of Enl and; and it might occasionally happen that a person was born within the dominions without being born within the allegiance, or, in other words, under the protection and control of the crown.’ Dicey, Confl. Laws, pp. 173-177, 741.
15
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, and 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.
16
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...”
https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/169/649
Repeating for emphasis:
“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, and 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.”