Natural Born Citizen Defined

There has been much debate as to whether the term “Natural Born Citizen” has ever been legally defined or will some court have to finally define it, such as the Supreme Court of the United States.  The term “Natural Born Citizen” is a requirement for only two positions within our government, President and Vice-President.  What did the Founding Father’s and Framers of the United States Constitution mean to do or accomplish by placing this requirement for the highest office?

First off, let us look at what the Framer’s used as a guide.

The Founding Fathers of the United States, used Vattel’s Laws of Nations as their guide and reference to meanings and definitions within our Constitution. 

The myth that the founding of American Republic was based on the philosophy of John Locke could only have been maintained, because the history of Leibniz’s influence was suppressed. The American Revolution was, in fact, a battle against the philosophy of Locke and the English utilitarians. Key to this struggle, was the work of the Eighteenth-century jurist, Emmerich de Vattel, whose widely read text, The Law of Nations, guided the framing of the United States as the world’s first constitutional republic. Vattel had challenged the most basic axioms of the Venetian party, which had taken over England before the time of the American Revolution, and it was from Vattel’s The Law of Nations, more than anywhere else, that America’s founders learned the Leibnizian natural law, which became the basis for the American System.

Benjamin Franklin’s (a signer of our Constitution) letter to Charles W.F. Dumas, December 1775
“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 send 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”?

I am sure most reading this will know who Benjamin Franklin was. However one reference will not squell the unbelief that Vattel’s Laws of Nations, is not clear enough. So do a search on Laws of Nations and you will get HUNDREDS of responses. http://rs6.loc.gov/ammem/hlawquery.html This from the Library of Congress.  Another excellent post is the following; The concept of judicial review, which Hamilton had championed in Rutgers v. Waddington, was included in the U.S. Constitution. In {The Federalist Papers,} No. 78, “The Judges as Guardians of the Constitution,” circulated as part of the debate over the new Constitution, Hamilton developed a conception of constitutional law which was coherent with Vattel’s conception. Hamilton stated that it is a “fundamental principle of republican government, which admits the right of the people to alter or abolish the established Constitution, whenever they find it inconsistent with their happiness.” However, the Constitution can only be changed by the nation as a whole, and not by the temporary passions of the majority or by the legislature. Both to protect the Constitution, but also to ensure just enforcement of the law, the independence of the judiciary from the legislature and the executive branch is essential. The judiciary must be the guardians of the Constitution, to ensure that all legislative decisions are coherent with it. This idea championed by Hamilton, that the courts ensured that the Executive and Legislative branches followed the Constitution, was later established as a principle of American jurisprudence by Chief Justice John Marshall

Again proving the Constitution, it’s meaning, it’s wording , and it’s definitions were clearly a result of being referenced to Vattel’s Laws of Nations. So what does the Laws of Nations say about a “Natural Born Citizen”?

Vattel in Bk 1 Sec 212, states the following. 

§ 212. Citizens and natives.

The citizens are the members of the civil society; bound to this society by certain duties, and subject to its authority, they equally participate in its advantages. The natives, or natural-born citizens, are those born in the country, of parents who are citizens. As the society cannot exist and perpetuate itself otherwise than by the children of the citizens, those children naturally follow the condition of their fathers, and succeed to all their rights. The society is supposed to desire this, in consequence of what it owes to its own preservation; and it is presumed, as matter of course, that each citizen, on entering into society, reserves to his children the right of becoming members of it. The country of the fathers is therefore that of the children; and these become true citizens merely by their tacit consent. We shall soon see whether, on their coming to the years of discretion, they may renounce their right, and what they owe to the society in which they were born. I say, that, in order to be of the country, it is necessary that a person be born of a father who is a citizen; for, if he is born there of a foreigner, it will be only the place of his birth, and not his country.

As I have stated before and will state here again.  Barack Obama, he has admitted being a British citizen at birth. From his own web-site,  “When Barack Obama Jr. was born on Aug. 4,1961, in Honolulu, Kenya was a British colony, still part of the United Kingdom’s dwindling empire. As a Kenyan native, Barack Obama Sr. was a British subject whose citizenship status was governed by The British Nationality Act of 1948. That same act governed the status of Obama Sr.‘s children.

Since Sen. Obama has neither renounced his U.S. citizenship nor sworn an oath of allegiance to Kenya, his Kenyan citizenship automatically expired on Aug. 4,1982.”

How can a British subject at birth, be free from any foreign influence as described by John Jay in the following; 

The Records of the Federal Convention of 1787 [Farrand’s Records, Volume 3]
LXVIII. John Jay to George Washington.3
[Note 3: 3 Documentary History of the Constitution, IV, 237.]
New York 25 July 1787

Permit me to hint, whether it would not be wise & seasonable to provide a a strong check to the admission of Foreigners into the administration of our national Government; and to declare expresly that the Command in chief of the american army shall not be given to, nor devolve on, any but a natural born Citizen.

Again Alexander Hamilton (a signer of our Constitution) in the Gazette of the United States, published in Philadelphia, on June 29, 1793 “The second article of the Constitution of the United States, section first, establishes this general proposition, that “the EXECUTIVE POWER shall be vested in a President of the United States of America…The executive is charged with the execution of all laws, the law of nations, as well as the municipal law, by which the former are recognized and adopted.”

“The Law of Nations” provides the Constitutional definition of a “natural born citizen, historical records reveal that Vattel’s work was quoted at the Federal Constitutional Convention of 1787, various State Constitutional Conventions, and was also referenced in a 1785 letter by John Jay regarding a diplomatic matter.

Should any court finally decide that there IS ample evidence that Barack Obama is not qualified to hold the Office of the President of the United States, they will have to rely on Vattel as the defining definition and argument, and stare reality in the face that not only is Barack Obama unqualified, but that he is not even a US Citizen.

As a final note concerning the Supreme Court and Laws of Nations, I direct you to the following;

The Debates in the Several State Conventions on the Adoption of the Federal Constitution [Elliot’s Debates, Volume 3]
Saturday, June 21, 1788.

Page 564

There is to be one Supreme Court–for chancery, admiralty, common pleas, and exchequer, (which great eases are left in England to four great, courts,) to which are added criminal jurisdiction, and all cases depending on the law of nations–a most extensive jurisdiction. This court has more power than any court under heaven. One set of judges ought not to have this power–and judges, particular, who have temptation always before their eyes. The court thus organized are to execute laws made by thirteen nations, dissimilar in their customs, manners, laws, and interests. If we advert to the customs of these different sovereignties, we shall find them repugnant and dissimilar. Yet they are all forced to unite and concur in making these laws. They are to form them on one principle, and on one idea, whether the civil law, common law, or law of nations. The gentleman was driven, the other day, to the expedient of acknowledging the necessity of having thirteen different tax laws. This destroys the principle, that he who lays a tax should feel it and bear his proportion of it. This has not been answered: it will involve consequences so absurd, that, I presume, they will not attempt to make thirteen different codes. They will be obliged to make one code. How will they make one code, without being contradictory to some of the laws of the different states?

Allow me to make one more reference;

The Debates in the Several State Conventions on the Adoption of the Federal Constitution [Elliot’s Debates, Volume 4]
Seamen’s Bill.–For the Regulation of Seamen on Board the Public Vessels, and in the Merchant Service of the United States.
House of Representatives, February, 1813.

Mr. SEYBERT. The Constitution of the United States declares, Congress shall have power “to establish a uniform rule of naturalization, and uniform laws on the subject of bankruptcies, throughout the United States.” Sir, the rule only relates to the mode; it is only operative during the nascent state of the political conversion, and it ceases to have effect the moment after the process has been completed. Your Constitution only recognizes the highest grade of citizenship that can be conferred. The alien is thus made a native, as it were, and is fully vested with every eight and privilege attached to the native, with the exception impressed on the Constitution Your statutes cannot deprive any particular species of citizens of the right of personal liberty, or the locomotive faculty, because the Constitution does not characterize the citizens of the United states as native and naturalized. Our great family is composed of a class of men forming a single genus, who, to all intents and purposes, are equal, except in the instance specified–that of not being eligible to the presidency of the United States. The only exception to the rule is expressed in the Constitution. If other exceptions had been contemplated by the framers of that instrument, they would also have been expressed. None other having been expressed, he said, it followed that your legislative acts could not make individual exceptions touching the occupation of a citizen. All freemen, citizens of the United States, may pursue their happiness in any manner and in any situation they please, provided they do not violate the rights of others. You cannot deny to any portion of your citizens, who desire to plough the deep, the right to do so, whilst you permit another portion of them the enjoyment of that right.

 

Mr. ARCHER. The framers of our Constitution did not intend to confine Congress to the technical meaning of the word naturalization, in the exercise of that power–the more especially when the comprehensive word rule was made use of. The principle upon which the power was to be exercised was left to the judicious exercise of Congress; all that was required was, that the rule should be uniform throughout the states. In the grant there is no other specification, as to the exercise of it, than that of its uniformity. The term naturalization was borrowed from England. It must be understood here in the sense and meaning which was, there attached to it. Whether it was absolute or qualified, it was still a naturalization. But the grant of a power in general terms necessarily implied the right to exercise that power in all its gradations. It Was in the political as it was in the natural world: the genus included the species. Besides, the power to naturalize was an attribute to sovereignty. It was either absolute or qualified; and if the grant to Congress only implied a power of unlimited naturalization, the power to qualify existed in the states or in the people, for what was not specifically granted was reserved.

In treating of the executive power, the Constitution defines the qualifications of the President. It declares that he should be a natural-born citizen, or a citizen at the adoption of the Constitution. This article is unquestionably no limitation of the power of Congress upon the subject of naturalization. It was impossible to abridge a specific grant of power without a specific limitation, and the article alluded to could not be tortured, by the most ingenious mind, to diminish, even by implication, the authority of Congress upon a subject to which it was totally irrelevant.

Thomas Jefferson

In Letters of Delegates to Congress, 1774-1789, Volume 21, Pages 250-251 ( http://tinyurl.com/8zvmgy ), we see notes from Thomas Jefferson from December 1783.

The first question is

“Qu. 1. Can an American citizen, adult, now inherit lands in England?”

to which Thomas Jefferson begins his answer with

“Natural subjects can inherit–Aliens cannot.
There is no middle character–every man must be the one or the other of these.”

(In other words, dual nationality did not exist. Citizenship was singular.)

Thomas Jefferson also wrote this in his answer:

“An alien is the subject or citizen of a foreign power.
The treaty of peace acknowleges we are no longer to owe allegiance to the king of G.B. It acknowleges us no longer as Natural subjects then.
It makes us citizens of independent states; it makes us aliens then.”

(So, in the context of these notes, an “alien” is an American citizen and not a British subject.)

The second question is

“Qu.2. The father a British subject; the son in America, adult, and within the description of an American citizen, according to their laws. Can the son inherit?”

and Thomas Jefferson answers, before dealing with an objection, 
“He owes allegiance to the states. He is an alien then and cannot inherit.”

(For the adult “alien” citizen son, the state of the British father does not descend to him, neither with respect to nationality/allegiance nor with respect to property.)

The third question is
“Qu. 3. The father a British subject. The son as in Qu. 2. but an infant. Can he inherit?”

Thomas Jefferson’s answer:

“1st. by the Common law.
We have seen before that the state of the father does not draw to it as an accessory that of the son where he is an adult.  But by the common law.”

(Thomas Jefferson wrote that there was “no middle character” between a “natural subject” and an “alien”. Further, he called the ADULT AMERICAN CITIZEN son of the British subject an ALIEN who could not inherit from the British father. So, it stands to reason that Thomas Jefferson is calling the MINOR son of the British subject a NATURAL SUBJECT by the common law in following the state of the father, even though the minor son is in America following the Treaty of Paris, called the “treaty of peace” in Thomas Jefferson’s answer to Question 1.)

“An alien is the subject or citizen of a foreign power.
The treaty of peace acknowleges we are no longer to owe allegiance to the king of G.B. It acknowleges us no longer as Natural subjects then.
It makes us citizens of independent states; it makes us aliens then.”

Here is the bomb- 
When Barack Obama Jr. was born on Aug. 4,1961, in Honolulu, Kenya was a British colony, still part of the United Kingdom’s dwindling empire. As a Kenyan native, Barack Obama Sr. was a British subject whose citizenship status was governed by The British Nationality Act of 1948. That same act governed the status of Obama Sr.‘s children.

Therefore Obama is an alien of the United States and an Alien is not, can not, nor EVER be a “Natural Born Citizen”

Other Quotes:

I find no fault with the introductory clause [S 61 Bill], which is simply declaratory of what is written in the Constitution, that every human being born within the jurisdiction of the United States of parents not owing allegiance to any foreign sovereignty is, in the language of your Constitution itself, a natural born citizen -Rep. John Bingham, framer of the 14th Amendment, before The US House of Representatives ((Cong. Globe, 39th, 1st Sess., 1291, March 9, 1866 ) http://grou.ps/zapem/blogs/3787

All persons born in the allegiance of the king are natural born subjects, and all persons born in the allegiance of the United States are natural born citizens. Birth and allegiance go together. Such is the rule of the common law, and it is the common law of this country, as well as of England.
-Circuit Justice Swayne, in United States vs Rhodes (1866)
http://www.thecommentary.net/1861-circuit-justice-swayne-defines-na…

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.
-Chief Justice Waite in Minor v. Happersett (1875)
http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/historics/USSC_CR_0088_0162_Z…

“In Minor v. Happersett, Chief Justice Waite, when construing, in behalf of the court, the very provision of the fourteenth amendment now in question, said: ‘The constitution does not, in words, say who shall be natural-born citizens. Resort must be had elsewhere to ascertain that.’ And he proceeded to resort to the common law as an aid in the construction of this provision.”
-Justice Grey, in US v Wong Kim Ark (1898) http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?court=US&vol=1…

“My assumption and my understanding is that if you are born of American parents, you are naturally a natural-born American citizen,” Chertoff replied.
“That is mine, too,” said Leahy
-Homeland Security SecretaryMichael Chertoff and Senator Patrick Leahy, (April 03, 2008) http://leahy.senate.gov/press/200804/041008c.html

Whereas John Sidney McCain, III, was born to American citizens on an American military base in the Panama Canal Zone in 1936: Now, therefore, be it
Resolved, That John Sidney McCain, III, is a `natural born Citizen’ under Article II, Section 1, of the Constitution of the United States. -110th Congress, SR 511 http://www.opencongress.org/bill/110-sr511/text