English Law Required a Subject Father to Make a Natural Born Subject (independence, v)
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From pages 639 and 640 of Cobett's Complete Collection of State Trials and Proceedings for High Treason and Other Crimes and Misdemeanors from the Earliest Period to the Present Time, Volume 2 Comprising the Period from the First Year of the Reign of King James the First, A.D. 1603, to the Third Year of the Reign of King Charles the First, A.D. 1627:
Now what MichaelNo claimed that 'Lord' Coke said was:
Apparently MichaelNo didn't see fit to include the commentary from the original source document. Or perhaps he didn't actually retrieve his information from the original source.
Note what is really being said here:
(1) That the parents are to be under the obedience of the king of England, within lands under the direct possession and jurisdiction of the king. Note that the parents are not required to be natural born subjects themselves, simply being upon the king's land, and thus subject to the king and owing to the king their ligeance and obedience is enough.
(2) That the place where the child is born is required to be under ligeance or obedience to the king (castles or forts seized by foreign invaders hostile to the king render the location to not be under ligeance or obedience to the king, even though the king still holds dominion of the place).
(3) That a person be born in a land while it was possessed and under the jurisdiction of the king of England.
The slippery part here is the concept of the parents being the subjects of the king. By the commentary above, it is extremely apparent that being a subject simply meant that you were physically located within lands possessed by and under the jurisdiction of the king of England and that you were not an alien on said aforementioned lands conducting a war against the king.
Great post, and if we take it to its conclusion, what is the real reason for all this jurisdiction and allegiance... Taxation. It wasn't because the King wanted to bestow rights to all of his subjects.
The slippery part here is the concept of the parents being the subjects of the king. By the commentary above, it is extremely apparent that being a subject simply meant that you were physically located within lands possessed by and under the jurisdiction of the king of England and that you were not an alien on said aforementioned lands conducting a war against the king.
Today this is known as naturalization.
A kid born in Sarasota, Florida of naturalized citizen parents, is a Natural Born Citizen.
This is true even if the naturalized citizen parents were of Chinese decent and lived part of their lives in Detroit.
It would even be true if the kid were born under the Sun Sign, Pisces.
Last edited by Nonarchist; 05-03-2013 at 01:20 PM..
The point is that the definition of the term 'natural born citizen' is no where defined within the United States Constitution. MichaelNo has raised the point that English common law provides a definition for the term. The current discussion is to determine whether MichaelNo's claim of the term's definition is correct.
Nonarchist, while you are entitled to your opinion as to the definition of the term 'natural born citizen', I don't believe that a requirement exists that the parents be citizens. If you wish to disagree, even after reviewing the information that I have cited, then we must agree to disagree.
The point is that the definition of the term 'natural born citizen' is no where defined within the United States Constitution. MichaelNo has raised the point that English common law provides a definition for the term. The current discussion is to determine whether MichaelNo's claim of the term's definition is correct.
Nonarchist, while you are entitled to your opinion as to the definition of the term 'natural born citizen', I don't believe that a requirement exists that the parents be citizens. If you wish to disagree, even after reviewing the information that I have cited, then we must agree to disagree.
I don't disagree with you or MichaelNo, so I won't agree to disagree, which by the way, is a stupid agreement.
You are leaving out that which went, and goes, without saying.
No one has ever argued that a child born in a country of that country's citizen parents would NOT be a Natural Born Citizen at birth.
This is what is known as a known - a given.
Try arguing from the given.
You sir, are arguing around the obvious to avoid arguing from the given.
The given is the ultimate, while the remainder is the subordinate.
The Commander in Chief is the ultimate, not the lesser.
A subject, in England, was always the lesser.
There! Now, CONSTRUCT your hierarchy of citizenship and offer why a Natural Born Citizen would not exist as the top of the citizenship hierarchy.
And no, it is not six of one or a half dozen of another.
Last edited by Nonarchist; 05-03-2013 at 01:42 PM..
The reason why we are discussing English common law is because that it provides a legal definition for a natural born citizen.
The founding fathers were at one time subjects of the King of England and many were well versed in English Law; when the Constitution was written, the presumption is that the term 'natural born citizen' was well understood by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison and James Monroe and as such no definition was required to be provided within the Constitution itself.
Some people say that English common law provided the Framers with a legal definition for an Article II "natural born citizen".
Other people disagree, and are of the opinion that given the monarchical system was rejected in the new republic of the US of A, and given also that the US definition of Article II "natural born citizen" (which was eligibility for a president of a republic and not merely qualification as a lowly subject of a monarch mainly for the purposes of qualification in England for inheritence of property) had no precedent in English law, the Framers had more strict qualifications for a natural born citizen, i.e. an imperative to secure the office of POTUS from the least possible foreign influence, persuasion and claim.
The Framers required only those who were born with no other allegiance other than to the US for the high security office of POTUS, native-birth to citizen parents was the best possible criteria to achieve this.
The Framers sourced many rules and principles as espoused by other great minds in the building of the new republic's core rules, one being the most popular Vattel.
Quote:
Emmerich de Vattel was the most popular of all writers on the law of nations in America before, but especially after, the American Revolution. Vattel's {The Law of Nations} arrived, shortly after its publication, in an America, which had already been greatly influenced by Leibniz. No later than 1770, it was used as a textbook in colleges. It was often quoted in speeches before judicial tribunals and legislatures, and used in formulating policy. Following the Revolution, Vattel's influence grew. Vattel was cited far more often than Grotius and Puffendorf, in court proceedings, from 1789 to 1820.
Among those citing Vattel in legal cases and government documents, were Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, James Wilson, Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, John Jay, and John Marshall. John Adams, the future delegate to the Continental Congress, second President of the U.S., and father of President John Quincy Adams, recorded in his Diary on Feb. 1, 1763, that after spending the day frivolously, instead of reading and thinking, ``The Idea of M. de Vattel indeed, scowling and frowning, haunted me.'' In 1765, Adams copied into his Diary three statements by Vattel, ``of great use to Judges,'' that laws should be interpreted according to the intent of the author, and every interpretation which leads to absurdity should be rejected.
Given that were true that the Framers were influenced to any large degree by the English law (which is not necessarily true) then to follow and be consistent with the English law definition, for a US native-born child to be a natural born citizen, then that child would have to be "born under the ligeance of a subject"/US citizen father.
MichaelNo, you keep bringing up this quote from Lord Coke (although his exact name is Sir Edward Coke - he was of common birth, knighted but never titled):
I was able to quickly find Coke's quote regarding the French man Sherly quite quickly, as Google has posted his writings on line and as others have cited that passage of Coke's in their own works, which of course are also online and locatable via a Google search.
However, the only evidence that I can find regarding the above quote are these:
The really interesting thing is that all of the links above are posts by a certain MichaelN on various forums on the web all claiming that the quote is from Coke. However, I have access to Coke's writings (as indicated above - that is how I located the accurate and complete quote regarding Monsieur Sherly) and MichaelN's exact quote cannot be located.
Before everyone jumps on MichaelNo for apparently creating a Sir Edward Coke quote out of thin air, I have located a similar quote (sans Edward Coke) from an English common law case but there is additional commentary that might further expand upon the concept that MichaelNo is posting all over the Internet. So maybe the quote is at best misattributed and not a total fabrication.
This passage is contained within a PDF and does not lend itself to a simple copy and paste. I will need time, which I do not have at the present, to go through the text, transcribe and interpret it, and bring it to this discussion.
From pages 639 and 640 of Cobett's Complete Collection of State Trials and Proceedings for High Treason and Other Crimes and Misdemeanors from the Earliest Period to the Present Time, Volume 2 Comprising the Period from the First Year of the Reign of King James the First, A.D. 1603, to the Third Year of the Reign of King Charles the First, A.D. 1627:
Now what MichaelNo claimed that 'Lord' Coke said was:
Apparently MichaelNo didn't see fit to include the commentary from the original source document. Or perhaps he didn't actually retrieve his information from the original source.
Note what is really being said here:
(1) That the parents are to be under the obedience of the king of England, within lands under the direct possession and jurisdiction of the king. Note that the parents are not required to be natural born subjects themselves, simply being upon the king's land, and thus subject to the king and owing to the king their ligeance and obedience is enough.
(2) That the place where the child is born is required to be under ligeance or obedience to the king (castles or forts seized by foreign invaders hostile to the king render the location to not be under ligeance or obedience to the king, even though the king still holds dominion of the place).
(3) That a person be born in a land while it was possessed and under the jurisdiction of the king of England.
The slippery part here is the concept of the parents being the subjects of the king. By the commentary above, it is extremely apparent that being a subject simply meant that you were physically located within lands possessed by and under the jurisdiction of the king of England and that you were not an alien on said aforementioned lands conducting a war against the king.
Unlike the English the US did not embrace alien visitors in amity as subjects/citizens, the aliens had to be naturalized, so it follows that if the English rule was followed, for a US native-born child to be a natural born citizen, that child would have to be "born under the ligeance of a subject"/US citizen father.
To the English 'natural born' was eligibility as a subject, but to the US natural born was eligibility for the high office of president of a republic and was a security measure to protect the office from the least possible foreign influence.
After the Constitution, there were no subjects in the U.S., only sovereigns - except, of course, for the subjects imported from Africa.
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