WHAT PART DID NATURAL LAW PLAY IN THE “NATURAL BORN CITIZEN” REQUIREMENT FOR THE PRESIDENCY?
by Thinkwell
(Nov. 27, 2010) — Mr. Pauly claims that by the laws of nature as described by E. de Vattel, to qualify as a natural born citizen, one need only be born to a citizen father into a legitimate marriage (since a wife, by natural law, takes on the citizenship of her husband upon marriage).
To test this line of thinking, it would be interesting to consider the exception of a bastard born to an unmarried woman, both for the case when no man claims the child and for the more complicated case when the biological father lays claim to the child. (Perhaps this required his adopting the child? Also, was whether the father was single or already married important? Hmmm…) Note that this is not a trivial question since a significant percentage of today’s population would probably be considered bastards by the Founders.
To further test Mr. Pauly’s interpretation of natural law and citizenship, we must fully explore the recent change to what is considered “natural” in society that came about starting at the time when a wife no longer automatically took on her husband’s citizenship upon marriage. In my opinion, this major societal change is a direct result of several trends:
- The waning of the importance of physical strength and muscle power in modern society (the rise of the machine). This has greatly reduced a man’s productivity advantage in the workplace. It also has led to changes in social morés that support the notion that men and women are interchangeable in society, which has been reinforced by pervasive legal shackles to a man’s natural animalistic tendency to dominance (whether all this is good or not is another discussion).
- The rise of modern medical care and technology has freed women from near exclusive lifelong dedication to the role of breeding the next generation. This is both because women no longer suffer a significant risk of death through childbirth and they need to produce fewer children since almost all survive. Note, too, that all of today’s modern conveniences mean that the direct labor required to support rearing children and maintaining a household has been vastly reduced.
This all has led to a paradigm shift of what is considered “natural” in society, to the point (in my opinion) that Vattel would consider it to have changed natural law, at least in modern Western civilization (remember, Vattel’s treatise was that of an observer, merely describing as accurately as possible the natural order of Man in society).
Thus, even though the Constitutional requirement for a natural born Citizen President has remained steadfast since the Founding, the basis of determination of what is “natural” has not — men and women are now fully equal natural citizens and children no longer exclusively follow the condition of their fathers. In other words, dual citizenship and split allegiance at birth, which once was rare-to-nonexistent, is now routinely possible.
I think this fundamental change is a large part of the reason for the doubts that exist about the Constitutional meaning of “natural born Citizen.” A new birth class of natural dual citizenship has evolved, but does it meet the Founders’ intent for Presidential eligibility?
The short answer is NO, it does not. The nbC requirement was simply the Founders’ way of protecting the Presidency from a person of inborn foreign influence (of which, Obama, as a self-proclaimed citizen of the world, is a good example). The Founders clearly wanted to ensure that the President was 100 percent red-blooded all-American, and would therefore have a natural affinity exclusively to America and its people above all others.
In light of the Founders’ driving goal of excluding any foreign allegiance, it is ludicrous to suggest that dual birth citizenship (due to the new “natural” of independent and equal parental heritage) should result in the possibility of one being a natural born Citizen of two countries at once. Except for certain mind-numbed Obots, the thought simply does not compute.
The Founders did not explicitly express the exclusivity requirement because in their day, it was completely redundant to the “natural born” requirement.
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NBC = blood + dirt: NO dual allegiances or foreign influences allowed, just born by Nature (not by statute) 100 percent red-blooded all-American.
Mr. Pauly’s opinion is way off kilter. The simple formula,required for only ONE person,the President of the United States is that he/she BE:
1. Born ON US soil (Jus Soli)
2. Born of American “Citizen parents” meaning BOTH “ParentS”
3. 14 Years a Resident
4. 35 Years Old.
No matter HOW Naturalization Law applies to any other persons besides the “President of the United States of America”, the President MUST be and is held to the HIGHEST
standard of Citizenship.
Furthermore,Public Law provides that certain crimes which were committed prior to becoming President are considered a bar from holding “any office under the United States of America”. Such a crime is TREASON.
Obama committed treason while having campaigned for Raila Odinga,an enemy of the USA in Kenya,while Obama “ow[ed] allegiance to the United States” as a US Senator:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sUaGe63Aqv4
See 18USC,Part 1,Chapter 115,Sec.2381
Also see, Clinton v. Jones,SCOTUS (1997)
Yes, that nicely sums up the Founders’ intentions. Mr. Pauly is making the mistake that it was just about the father, when really their intent was to exclude persons of inborn foreign influence. At the time of the Founding there was no distinction between the two because the wife took on all the husband’s political allegiance upon marriage so the citizen status of the father was enough to ensure exclusivity in status (nbC) of the child.
The Founders clearly wanted to ensure that the President was 100 percent red-blooded all-American, and would therefore have a natural affinity only to America and its people above all others. Today we recognize a child’s parents as independent sovereigns, so one may be born a dual citizen, with dual allegiances at birth, but that obviously contradicts the Founders’ intent to exclude persons of inborn foreign influence. Mr. Pauly is simply chasing this issue down the wrong rabbit hole.
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NBC = blood + dirt: NO dual allegiances or foreign influences allowed, just born by Nature (not by statute) 100 percent red-blooded all-American.
Until the Constitution is amended, Article II stands as written, and the intent of the Framers is clear: an American president must be naturally, automatically, indisputably a citizen of America at birth and not a citizen of any other nation at birth. The only way to meet that MANDATE is to be born in America to American parents.
In Obama’s case discussion of his mother is irrelevant since his father was clearly a foreigner. On that basis alone he is ineligible. Moreover, there is strong documentation showing a foreign birth for Obama, so he is also ineligible on that basis. Obama fails both the blood and soil tests. It is a disgraceful travesty that he remains in office, and it was criminal fraud by the Democratic Party that put him there and has kept him there.
If the Supreme Court and the Joint Chiefs of Staff continue to refuse to act, the new Congress must hold hearings and disqualify Obama or revolution would appear to be the only path left open to constitutional governance.
I think there is good evidence that the Founders intended the phrase “natural born Citizen” as used in the Constitution to be perhaps even more restrictive than natural law as described by E. de Vattel. He wrote that the naturals/natives or indigenous citizens were, in general, “those who are born in the country, of citizen parents,” but also included exceptions for those born out of country to citizen parents and born free of any claim of foreign allegiance.
One only need look to the original Naturalization Act of 1790 and its first revision in 1795 to see the Founders’ intent in this regard. The original Act stated: “the children of citizens of the United States, that may be born beyond Sea, or out of the limits of the United States, shall be considered as natural born Citizens […]” whereas, in the revised 1795 version, this was changed to just plain “citizens.” The “natural born” part was dropped. Why was that?
The original Act most likely must have been considered to have been in conflict with the Constitution (which cannot be superseded by a mere Act of Congress), therefore the revised Act informs us as to the Founders’ understanding of at least some of the intended restrictive meaning of the phrase “natural born Citizen.”
U.S. controlled territories are not States, so a person such as recent Presidential candidate, John McCain, even though born to citizen parents, was very clearly born “beyond Sea” and “out of the limits of the United States.” Thus, by the guidance of the history of the Naturalization Act, he cannot be a natural born Citizen in the Constitutional sense (even if he were to be “a child born in the Armies of the State” as defined by Vattel).
In the context of his time I suppose that Vattel would be referring to the entourage of wives and families that sometimes accompanied an army on extended campaign (including during an occupation). A modern day equivalent would be like when our troops were in hostile administrative occupation in post WWII Germany or Japan, whereas the situation in Panama when McCain was born seems more like a non-wartime business venture or like our troops being stationed by consent in a friendly territory or country today.
While at war, the accompanying entourage is an encapsulated little bit of the home culture on-the-move. While stationed for long periods within the territory of a friendly foreign ally, the likelihood of mixing and absorbing the culture is much greater. The latter case seems, at the very least, like a gray zone situation more akin to a birth occurring while on an extended business assignment – I wonder what Vattel would have thought of that?
In any case, the history of the Naturalization Act seems to add further restrictions beyond Vattel (depending on what his true intent was). Clearly the Founders (for they were still active at the time of the Naturalization Act and its first revision) thought that to “be born beyond Sea, or out of the limits of the United States,” even if born to citizen parents, was not enough to make one natural born in the Constitutional sense.
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NBC = blood + dirt : NO dual allegiances or foreign influences allowed, just born by Nature (not by statute) 100 percent red-blooded all American.
I’ve been thinking the exact same thing but Thinkwell beat me to it. This suggests that the argument that the Constitution is absolutely not a “living” document may not be correct if an evolution of natural law is allowed to cause an evolution in the Constitution.
This could be a very interesting line of reasoning to pursue. One could counter this with an argument that once the founding documents were written, the natural law at the time was locked in…. I wonder if the Courts have ever interpreted on this point?
If the Supreme Court could see this argument in the Kerchner case or others, doesn’t it add just another spark for them to decide to take it up? Hell, they could even use this evolved natural law reasoning to help rule that Obama is an NBC. In this scenario they might say (after discovery and if the defense raises this argument) that his Mother’s marriage was not valid, if her purported husband was already married, meaning her citizenship drove the NBC decision. This requires them to assume that marriage defines the male parent..but that might be a stretch if the biological father is recognized and everyone including the Court recognized it as valid at the time. They could go on and argue that the U.S. law cannot allow a foreign country to claim any jurisdiction over U.S citizen parent children overseas, and open it even further to argue that the U.S can also not claim 14th Amendment “anchor baby” citizenship over children of foreigners born here.
Certainly I’m doing armchair speculating but, it seems that the more tentacles to a case, the more savory it is for judges of various political and philosophical bents, as it allows them to either use clear Constitutional logic and exercise their oaths diligently or to spin the forever spinning progressive elitist Constitution morphing/shredding machine.
Natural law may evolve with time, but that does not retroactively change the intent of the Founders nor should it change the effect of the protective eligibility restrictions they put in place.
As previously stated, the natural born Citizen requirement was simply the Founders’ way of protecting the Presidency from a person of inborn foreign influence. The Founders clearly wanted to ensure that the President was 100 percent red-blooded all-American, and would therefore have a natural affinity exclusively to America and its people above all others.
When it comes to the meaning of our Constitution, the “living” document theory is and remains complete nonsense. Any changes in meaning are effected strictly by rule of law as spelled out in Constitution’s own Amendment process.
> The Founders clearly wanted to ensure that the President was 100 percent red-blooded all-American
Then why did they use a term that had a 400-year history of meaning “ius soli” and “secretly” meant it to signify something else?
Seriously, although this may seem like an Obot argument, if we really go about redefining the meaning of words in the Constitution, where does this lead us?
Some people make contrived argument about why NBC in the Constitution is used according to Vattel’s definition and we all jump ship because we know that Barry Soetoro happens to fit that “revisionist” definition (although it’s clear enough he would not be eligible for several other reasons). But we never ask for the consequences and for the motives of those who want us to quickly accept redefinitions of Constitutional words. What’s next, a redefinition that “inalienable rights” does not mean “cannot be taken away”, but maybe “cannot be sold for cash” because some Dutch writer used it in that meaning and we can make up contrived arguments why this Dutch writer was “influential to the Founders”?
C’mon people, have you never considered this (the NBC argument) could be a clever plot by America’s enemies to twist our Constitutional rights into something else?
if anyone thinks George Washington and the framers of Constitution, lost lives and beat the British, only to turn over the presidency to a British subject is clearly off their rockers and not a true American.
Chester Arthur,our ‘other” usurper had his staff salute the Union Jack for heaven’s sake.
Obama has flown the Chinese Flag ON the White House lawn:
http://www.wnd.com/index,php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=110583
Corrected Link:
http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=110583
I must say it is much more logical to speak to the purpose of our Founding Fathers
than to confuse and complicate the matter with technicalities. The power mad are
relying on this confusion and the cooperative feigned ignorance of the media.