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While waiting patiently for someone to explain who/what "vattel" is and why anyone should care, may I offer another quote from some antiquated document, in fact the first law ever passed in the United States of America:
"...when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government."
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.
The Supreme Court spent nearly 12 pages of their rulings debating what makes a Citizen of the US.
and because of the above, the case is now precedent for other cases on citizenship, as recently as Anekeny v Daniels:
Quote:
Based upon the language of Article II, Section 1, Clause 4 and the guidance provided by Wong Kim Ark, we conclude that persons born within the borders of the United States are “natural born Citizens” for Article II, Section 1 purposes, regardless of the citizenship of their parents. Just as a person “born within the British dominions [was] a natural-born British subject” at the time of the framing of the U.S. Constitution, so too were those “born in the allegiance of the United States [] natural-born citizens.”15
This is how precedent is set.
The court in Ankeny even addressed Minor v Happersett:
Quote:
Section 1 of the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution governs who is a citizen of the United States. It provides that “[a]ll persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States . . . .” U.S. CONST. amend XIV, § 1. Article II has a special requirement to assume the Presidency: that the person be a “natural born Citizen.” U.S. CONST. art. II, § 1, cl. 4. The United States Supreme Court has read these two provisions in tandem and held that “[t]hus new citizens may be born or they may be created by naturalization.” Minor v. Happersett, 88 (21 Wall.) U.S. 162, 167 (1874). In Minor, written only six years after the Fourteenth Amendment was ratified, the Court observed that:
[11] Plaintiffs do not provide pinpoint citations to the congressional debate quotations to which they cite.
The Constitution does not, in words, say who shall be natural-born citizens. Resort must be had elsewhere to ascertain that. At common-law, with the nomenclature of which the framers of the Constitution were familiar, it was never doubted that all children born in a country of parents who were its citizens became themselves, upon their birth, citizens also. These were natives, or natural-born citizens, as distinguished from aliens or foreigners. Some authorities go further and include as citizens children born within the jurisdiction without reference to the citizenship of their parents. As to this class there have been doubts, but never as to the first. For the purposes of this case it is not necessary to solve these doubts. Id. at 167-168. Thus, the Court left open the issue of whether a person who is born within the United States of alien parents is considered a natural born citizen.12
[12] Note that the Court in Minor contemplates only scenarios where both parents are either citizens or aliens, rather in the case of President Obama, whose mother was a U.S. citizen and father was a citizen of the United Kingdom.
They recognized that Minor v Happersett, the court entertained scenarios, but never went on to affirm any definition of Natural born citizenship
While waiting patiently for someone to explain who/what "vattel" is and why anyone should care, may I offer another quote from some antiquated document, in fact the first law ever passed in the United States of America:
"...when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government."
Listing 1, definition 4, but the others fit as well.
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