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Monday, March 25, 2013

Senator Ted Cruz Is Not a “Natural Born Citizen” and Therefore Not Eligible to Be President


Senator Ted Cruz Is Not a “Natural Born Citizen” and Therefore Not Eligible
                                               to be President

                                           By Mario Apuzzo, Esq.
                                                 March 25, 2013

It is pretty amazing to see to what lengths some will go to convince us that their favorite political candidate is eligible to be President. Greg Conterio has written an article in which he concludes that Senator Ted Cruz, who was born in Canada to a U.S. citizen mother and non-U.S. citizen father, is eligible to be President. The article can be read at http://www.westernfreepress.com/2013/03/23/birtherism-and-the-tyranny-of-ignorance/?hubRefSrc=email#lf_comment=65580535 .

I do not object to Mr. Conterio having a view that is different from mine on the definition of a "natural born Citizen." What is most objectionable is how he goes about attempting to prove that he is correct and others are wrong. In referring to those who do not agree with him, Mr. Conterio uses language such as “ ‘Birtherism’ and the Tyranny of Ignorance,” (the title of his article), “resurgence of the ‘Birther’ phenomenon,” “depth of ignorance,” “false assertions,” “sort of thing,” “completely wrong,” “nonsense,” and “twist themselves into knots.” What is really amazing is that he also tells us that it only took him “a few minutes to do a quick internet search” to come up with the correct answer on the meaning of a “natural born Citizen” and how Ted Cruz meets that definition. And how could I not mention that he tells us that “[s]ome guy with a blog, or some attorney with some bizarre sounding legal theory are NOT authoritative sources.” I wonder what attorney Mr. Conterio has in mind.

Mr. Conterio’s sole source for his definition of a “natural born Citizen” is Congressional statutes (8 U.S.C. Sec. 1401 et seq.). He cites and quotes those statutes and while conceding that they at most only declare persons to be “citizens of the United States” at birth, he says that Congress’s expression has the equivalent constitutional meaning as a “natural born Citizen.” There are several problems with Mr. Conterio’s argument.

First, given that the Founders and Framers inserted the “natural born Citizen” clause into the Constitution and they must have had a purpose for doing so, the clause had to have a specific meaning. As we shall see below, that meaning was a child born in a country to parents who were its “citizens” at the time of the child’s birth. The fact that there was in the Constitutional Convention no debate on the meaning of the clause gives us more evidence that the clause must have had a settled meaning. We also know that the Founders and Framers relied upon the clause to keep foreign influence and royalty out of the office of President and Commander in Chief. The historical record shows that the Founders and Framers were most concerned about foreign influence invading the administration of our new government. So, while they did have a concern with royalty occupying the office of President, the purpose for using the “natural born Citizen” clause was broader. As John Jay stated in his famous July 25, 1787 letter to then-General George Washington, he proposed that the Commander in Chief of the Military be a “natural born Citizen” so as to provide a “strong check to the admission of Foreigners into the administration of our national Government.” The historical record contains statements from other Founders, Framers, and commentators as to the need to keep foreign influence out of the Office of President and Commander in Chief. Moreover, even assuming that the purpose was only to keep royalty out of the White House, the Founders and Framers would have required that a child be born to parents who were U.S. citizens to make sure that their child at the moment of birth did not inherit from either one of his parents titles of royalty or nobility.

So, we can see that the “natural born Citizen” clause, by requiring birth in the country to citizen parents, served a great purpose for the Founders and Framers. It not only was designed to keep foreign influence out of the Office of President and Commander in Chief. But it was also designed to make sure that those high and powerful civil and military offices would never end up in the hands of royalty or nobility. In short, the Founders and Framers through the clause sought to preserve the new constitutional republic not only for the present, but also for Posterity.

The historical record also shows that at first, the Framers were going to allow Congress to appoint the President. But they decided against that idea because they feared the foreign influence running rampant in Congress would spill over onto the office of President and Commander in Chief. So they decided on the Electoral College, a group of electors who would come together only once every four years to elect the President and then disband. The process was explained by Hamilton in Federalist No. 68: The Mode of Electing the President (Hamilton). In referring to the President, Alexander Hamilton described him as the “person to whom so important a trust was to be confided. . . .” He described the Office of President as “so important an agency in the administration of the government . . .” “Nothing was more to be desired than that every practicable obstacle should be opposed to cabal, intrigue, and corruption. These most deadly adversaries of republican government might naturally have been expected to make their approaches from more than one quarter, but chiefly from the desire in foreign powers to gain an improper ascendant in our councils. How could they better gratify this, than by raising a creature of their own to the chief magistracy of the Union?” Alexander Hamilton, Federalist, no. 68, 457-61 (12 Mar. 1788). So we can see why the Framers took it out of the hands of Congress to elect the President and why they gave that task to the Electoral College.

Yet, Mr. Conterio wants to give Congress the power, not to confirm what that settled meaning of a “natural born Citizen” was, but to actually change it as it wishes and when it wishes. On the contrary, Congress through Article I, Section 8, Clause 4 only has the power to make uniform the laws of naturalization. It would not only be contradictory to give Congress the power to change the meaning of “natural born Citizen” through its naturalization powers, but would also fly in the face of the Framers having taken away from Congress the power to elect the President and the reason for doing so.

Second, Mr. Conterio does not realize that by giving Congress the power to define a “natural born Citizen” as it wishes and when it wishes he is giving Congress the power to amend the Constitution without constitutional amendment. I wonder what Mr. Conterio would say if he knew that from 1802 to 1855, any child born out of the United States, even to citizen parents, was considered by Congress to be an alien. What does that do to Mr. Conterio’s thesis of Congress deciding by statute who is a “natural born Citizen?” What did Congress’s 1802 statute do to Ted Cruz’s eligibility to be President? We know that the citizens made the Constitution and not vice versa. But yet, Mr. Conterio would have Congress decide who is a “natural born Citizen,” even giving to it the power to deny that status to a child who inherits by nature from his or her parents the right to be born in a free and independent republican America.

Third, Mr. Conterio assumes without proving that a “citizen at birth” or “citizen from birth” is the constitutional equivalent to an Article II “natural born Citizen.” I have argued at length that the clause is “natural born Citizen” and not any other variation. I have also argued at length and historical sources, Acts of Congress, and U.S. Supreme Court precedent support me, that the phrases do not have the same constitutional meaning. Being a “citizen at birth” or “citizen from birth” is only one of the necessary conditions of being a “natural born Citizen.” The other two necessary conditions are birth place and birth parents. All three of these conditions, birth time, birth place, and birth parents are necessary and sufficient conditions to be a “natural born Citizen.” See Emer de Vattel, The Law of Nations, Section 212 (London 1797) (1st ed. Neuchatel 1758) (explained that the “natives, or natural-born citizens, are those born in the country, of parents who are citizens.” http://www.lonang.com/exlibris/vattel/vatt-119.htm .; Minor v. Happersett, 88 U.S. 162, 167-68 (1875) (“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”); U.S. v. Wong Kim Ark, 169 U.S. 649, 679-80 (1898) (same). Contra Ankeny v. Daniels; Tisdale v. Obama; Fair v. Obama (appeal pending); Farrar v. Obama; Galasso v. Obama; Jackson v. Obama; Paige v. Obama (appeal pending) (all found that mere birth in the United States is generally sufficient to make one a “natural born Citizen;” none of these Obama cases are decisions of our U.S. Supreme Court).

Fourth, Mr. Conterio totally discounts the source to which the Founders and Framers would have looked for their definition of a “natural born Citizen.” When the Framers adopted the Constitution in 1787, there were no acts of Congress in place. Hence, the Framers could not have possibly looked to Congressional Acts which came later in time for the meaning of the clause. They had to have looked somewhere else for their meaning. Minor told us what that source was. It said it was the common law. And under the definition that Minor gave us of a “natural-born citizen,” a concept that belonged to the nation to define and not to any one individual state, we know that that common law was not the English common law, which had application only in the states and which the U.S. Supreme Court many times when interpreting terms in the Constitution consulted on matters that affected state local issues, but rather American national common law which had its source in the law of nations as found in Vattel’s Section 212 of The Law of Nations.

Fifth, Mr. Conterio does not realize that all expressions of U.S. citizenship found in the positive laws such as the Fourteenth Amendment, Acts of Congress, and treaties are nothing but exceptions to the American national common law definition of a “natural born Citizen.” It is telling that none of these laws include within their text the words “natural born Citizen.” Rather, they all use “citizen of the United States.” As Minor also explained, at common law, anyone who did not meet the definition of a “natural-born citizen” was an “alien or foreigner.” Hence, citizens made through these other positive laws are not “natural born Citizens,” but rather “citizens of the United States,” either at birth or after birth. They are given that status by positive law creating exceptions to the American national common law rule. Those exceptions do not drive or become the definition of a “natural born Citizen.” Rather, they only allow the making of more “citizens of the United States" and in the end prove through the exceptions themselves what the correct definition actually is. See Wong Kim Ark (which created another exception under the Fourteenth Amendment to the general national common law definition of a “natural-born citizen” by distinguishing a child born in the country to alien parents from a “natural born” child born in the country to “citizen” parents and finding that the former, because of being born in the country was as much a “citizen” as the latter, found Wong, who was born in the United States to domiciled and resident alien parents who were “subject to the jurisdiction” of the United States, to be a “citizen of the United States” at birth by virtue of the Fourteenth Amendment (not to be conflated and confounded with a “natural-born citizen”)).

So, now we have Mr. Conterio trying to convince us that any argument on the meaning of a “natural born Citizen” that does not fit well with him can only come from someone or something that is not only not an “authoritative source,” but also a “tyranny of ignorance.” On the other hand, he tells us that he is an “authoritative source” and well-informed on the “natural born Citizen” clause. Readers can decide for themselves what are the authoritative sources, what is logical and based on reason, and from all that what is the correct meaning of an Article II “natural born Citizen.” A thoughtful and thorough analysis of all the historical and legal sources should lead the critical thinker to the unshakable conclusion that an Article II “natural born Citizen” is a child born in a country to parents who were it “citizens” at the time of the child’s birth.

Since Ted Cruz was not born in the country (he was born in Canada) and he was not born to “citizen” parents (his father was not a U.S. citizen at the time of his son's birth), he is not and cannot be a “natural born Citizen.” Under an Act of Congress (8 U.S.C. Sec. 1401(g)), he is a "citizen of the United States" at birth. This means for him that he is eligible to be a Senator, who at a minimum only has to be a “citizen of the United States” for nine years, but not eligible to be President, who must be a “natural born Citizen.”

Mario Apuzzo, Esq.
March 25, 2013
http://puzo1.blogspot.com
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349 comments:

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Robert said...

It is very difficult to imagine the level of ignorance or insanity by which so many eagerly disregard this one section of our Constitution as if they are completely unaware that doing so allows for the similar treatment of all others.

Why do we even have any citizenship, age or residency requirement? Why bother with an electoral college? Why bother with a confirmation before the House or Senate? Why even bother with a vote?

Taking this argument all the way to every other paragraph of the Constitution, including the Bill of Rights, is not any stretch at all. In fact, it seems to be the clear intent of the Obama seditionists as they actively pursue open revolution against the people and our Constitution. Just like their mentor Joseph Stalin predicted, they are seeking our complete destruction and doing so without ever having to fire even a single shot.

jayjay said...

It is beyond any clear reason why so many ill-informed (AKA IGNORANT)in the US population cannot do anything but play "follow the leader" with so many in the media - both liberal and conservative - and parrot the name of the non-Democrat candidate de joure such as Cruz in this instance.

Equally as unqualified would be such as Rubio, Jindal, Santorum, and many others (insert your own favored unqualified candidate here also). It seems it will never cease. Have all Americans and others voting illegally been overcome with mass stupidity???

Many times ignorance can be corrected through education ... but
stupid is forever.

The Obama precedent is no real precedent but merely a case of gross lawbreaking which may eventually bounce back to bite the man and his ilk in the ass. Let's hope!

Excellent essay, Mario!!

Stan said...

One of the main pro-Obama posters argues that the term only meant to the Framers that the candidate could not be a NATURALIZED citizen; and that otherwise, jus sanguinis did not apply. What proof is there in the record that the Framers were going by American common law/Vattel's definition, and not English common law, as was very common at the time (I am led to understand)??

P.S. I appreciate all your good work in this regard, Mr. Apuzzo. But this question, of which 'common law' was being applied in and to the matter, is a troubling one.

Unknown said...

from what I have seen you do not have to be a citizen anymore to be prez. Obama has shown no evidence he is a citizen...just a big charade

Mario Apuzzo, Esq. said...

Stan,

The unanimous U.S. Supreme Court in Minor v. Happersett explained:

“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. It is sufficient, for everything we have now to consider, that all children, born of citizen parents within the jurisdiction, are themselves citizens.”

This is not the English common law, for under that law, in the case of friendly aliens who were not diplomats, there was no reference to the citizenship of the child’s parents and there was never any doubt that a child born in the King’s dominion and under his allegiance and obedience to friendly alien parents was a “natural born subject. Rather, Minor expressed American national common law emanating from the law of nations. See Vattel Section 212 in The Law of Nations where the same definition of a “natural-born citizen” will be found.

There is not one U.S. Supreme Court case that has ever defined an Article II “natural born Citizen” (not to be confounded with a “citizen of the United States” under the Fourteenth Amendment) under the English common law. If I am wrong, please provide the one case and explain how that case defines a “natural born Citizen” under the English common law.


Mario Apuzzo, Esq. said...

Stan,

Article II, Section 1, Clause 5 says a “natural born Citizen” is eligible to be President. It does not say a “citizen” who is not a “naturalized citizen” is eligible. In other words, one has to meet the definition of a “natural born Citizen.” You do not get there by simply showing that one is a “citizen” which status was not acquired by naturalization after birth, for that is not the definition of the clause. Again, the definition of a “natural born Citizen” is a child born in a country to parents who were its “citizens” at the time of the child’s birth. The is the only definition of the clause and it is that definition which must be satisfied, not some other definition under the Fourteenth Amendment or Congressional Act used to acquire the status of a “citizen of the United States” at birth (what you call a non-naturalized citizen).

MichaelN said...

The 14th Amendment made it clear what constituted a born US citizen, this was bearing in mind, on the part of the amendment framers, the original US Constitution with it's "natural born Citizen" requirement for POTUS eligibility.

The 14th Amendment had nothing to do with POTUS eligibility; it merely confirmed the two means to ordinary US citizenship, on of which is by birth in the country, i.e. native-birth.

Article II "natural born Citizen" was specifically for eligibility for POTUS, it was NOT eligibility criteria for US citizenship; it was eligibility for a person who must ALREADY be a born US citizen.

Article II "natural born Citizen" must therefore mean to descibe a born US citizen with an additional quality.

Given the imperative to require a person with the highest possible allegiance and the least possible foreign ties, to be eligible for the office of POTUS, then it can only be that the additional quality was for the native-born "citizen of the United States" to be born to US citizen parents i.e. a "natural born Citizen".

Unknown said...

Jeez, Mario, give it a rest.

Why in the world would you think that when he said "some attorney with some bizarre sounding legal theory" that he was talking about you, hmm?

When the Minor court said "For the purposes of this case it is not necessary to solve these doubts," that means THE COURT DID NOT RULE ON THAT ISSUE. Wong Kim Ark ruled on that issue and resolved those doubts: If you're born in the U.S., you're a natural born citizen, regardless of the citizenship of your parents. Yes, that includes anchor babies and President Obama.

Flail and fail, Mario. Flail and fail.

Doublee said...

Canada is one of two major countries that grant birthright citizenship. The other is the United States. This site also has discussion of the meaning “subject to the jurisdiction thereof” in the 14th amendment.

http://www.cis.org/birthright-citizenship

This would make Senator Cruz a dual citizen at birth just like Obama. Obama lost his British/Kenyan citizenship at age 23.

It would be interesting to know if Senator Cruz is still a Canadian citizen and if he is aware of his Canadian citizenship status. Has he taken steps to renounce his Canadian citizenship?

Mario Apuzzo, Esq. said...

Fogbow Foggy,

I of II

You said: “Jeez, Mario, give it a rest.” Is that supposed to mean that you think you won this debate? I hope not because I have not yet seen any historical and legal evidence that convincingly supports your position. Since you have commented here, you are welcome to present it so that it may be examined for validity and soundness.

You said: “When the Minor court said ‘For the purposes of this case it is not necessary to solve these doubts,’ that means THE COURT DID NOT RULE ON THAT ISSUE. Wong Kim Ark ruled on that issue and resolved those doubts: If you're born in the U.S., you're a natural born citizen, regardless of the citizenship of your parents. Yes, that includes anchor babies and President Obama.”

This is a misunderstanding of what Minor said. Minor’s doubts were about whether a child born in the United States to alien parents was a “citizen of the United States” at birth under the Fourteenth Amendment. The doubts were not about whether that child could be a “natural born Citizen,” for he could not given that the Court clearly told us in the same paragraph that such a child at common law with which the Framers were familiar was a child born in a country to parents who were its “citizens” at the time of the child’s birth. Those doubts had been confirmed by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1873 in The Slaughterhouse Cases, 83 U.S. 36, 73(1873) which said in dicta when interpreting the Fourteenth Amendment: “The phrase, ‘subject to its jurisdiction’ was intended to exclude from its operation children of ministers, consuls, and citizens or subjects of foreign States born within the United States." Minor in 1875 did not have to address and resolve these doubts because Virginia Minor was born in the country to “citizen” parents which made her a “natural born Citizen” and therefore not in need of the Fourteenth Amendment.

Examining whether Virginia Minor was a “citizen” so that it could then decide whether she was entitled under Article IV as a “citizen” to privileges and immunities that included the right to vote which no state could abridge because of the Fourteenth Amendment, the unanimous U.S. Supreme Court in Minor v. Happersett in 1875 searched for the definition of a “natural-born citizen.” It said that the Fourteenth Amendment did not define a “natural-born citizen.” It also said that Virginia Minor did not need the Fourteenth Amendment to show that she was a “citizen.” Relying upon what it said was the common law definition of a “natural-born citizen” with which the Framers were familiar when they drafted the Constitution, Minor said that any child born in a country to parents who were its “citizens” at the time of the child’s birth was not only a “citizen” like his or her parents, but also a “natural-born citizen.” This was the same definition of a “natural-born citizen” put forth by Vattel in Section 212 of The Law of Nations (1758).

Continued . . .

Mario Apuzzo, Esq. said...

II of II

So Minor showed how it did not need the Fourteenth Amendment to demonstrate that a person could not only be a “citizen,” but also be a “natural-born citizen.” Virtually the same judges that made up the Minor Court had earlier stated in dicta in The Slaughterhouse Cases: “The phrase, ‘subject to its jurisdiction’ was intended to exclude from its operation children of ministers, consuls, and citizens or subjects of foreign States born within the United States." Id. at 73. If the Court did not consider children born in the United States to alien parents to be not even “citizens,” which was consistent with Congress’s naturalization acts of 1790, 1795, 1802, and 1855, they surely could not be “natural born Citizens.” Hence, again referring to the Fourteenth Amendment, Minor also said that “there have been doubts” whether a child “born in the jurisdiction” to alien parents was even a “citizen.” Since Virginia Minor was born in the United States to “citizen” parents which birth circumstances made her a “natural-born citizen,” and because she therefore did not need the aid of the Fourteenth Amendment to establish her birthright citizenship, Minor ruled that it was not necessary for it to resolve these doubts.

Addressing the question raised and doubts created by The Slaughterhouse Cases and left open by Minor, Wong Kim Ark, through the aid of the colonial English common law and its doctrine of broad allegiance, repudiated The Slaughterhouse Cases Fourteenth Amendment dicta and said “[t]hat neither Mr. Justice Miller nor any of the justices who took part in the decision of The Slaughterhouse Cases understood the court to be committed to the view that all children born in the United States of citizens or subjects of foreign States were excluded from the operation of the first sentence of the Fourteenth Amendment." Wong Kim Ark, 169 U.S. at 679. Wong Kim Ark then ruled that a child "‘if born in the country, is as much a citizen as the natural-born child of a citizen, and by operation of the same principle’" (citing and quoting Horace Binney). Id. at 693. The “same principle” referred to “birth in the country.” Indeed, according to the Court, a child born in the country to alien parents was as much a “citizen” as the “natural born” child of citizen parents, but only that “natural born” child born in the country to “citizen” parents could be a “natural-born citizen.” It therefore held that under the Fourteenth Amendment, a child born in the United States to domiciled and resident alien parents was born “subject to the jurisdiction” of the United States and therefore “becomes at the time of his birth a citizen of the United States.” But Wong Kim Ark itself cautioned that a child born out of the United States to “citizen” parents, who “becomes at the time of his birth a citizen of the United States,” was still a naturalized “citizen” so made by Congress through its naturalization powers. It follows from what the Court said that this child, even though he “becomes at the time of his birth a citizen of the United States,” was not a “natural-born citizen.” So, Wong Kim Ark specifically told us that anyone needing the Fourteenth Amendment for birthright citizenship status, can be “at the time of his birth a citizen of the United States,” but cannot be a “natural born Citizen.”

So, Foggy, do not just tell us you won, show us by what reason and analysis you did. Since you will not be able to present that reason and analysis (by the way, your little snark does not adequately substitute for them), it is evident that you and your foggy buddies are the ones who have failed and continue to fail in this debate.

Mario Apuzzo, Esq. said...

Doublee,

Because of jus sanguinis (citizenship inherited from birth parents) and jus soli (citizenship acquired from birth place), Ted Cruz was born with three allegiances and citizenships, something that the Founders and Framers would never have allowed for future Presidents and Commanders in Chief of the Military. Under our Constitution, the President is not only the chief executive of the civil government, which alone carries with it broad powers over foreign affairs and treaties, but he is also the Commander in Chief of the Military. John Jay was quite concerned that the Commander in Chief of the Military be a “natural born Citizen.” George Washington agreed. Clearly, they expected future Commanders of the Military to have full and complete political, military, and legal allegiance to the United States from the moment of birth. Just imagine the Founders and Framers allowing a person who was born a British subject to be a future President and Commander in Chief of the Military. I say “future” because the Founders and Framers, themselves born British subjects who through the Declaration of Independence and adherence to the American Revolution became “Citizens of the United States,” had to grandfather themselves to be eligible to be President. But they commanded that those born after the adoption of the Constitution had to be “natural born Citizen” in order to be eligible to be President. Hence, no longer was a “Citizen of the United States” eligible to be President if born after the adoption of the Constitution.

Here is how Ted Cruz acquires conflicting allegiances and citizenships from the moment of birth:

Jus sanguinis: he was born to a Cuban father. He was therefore born a citizen of and in allegiance to Cuba.

Jus sanguinis: he was born to a U.S. citizen mother. He was therefore born a “citizen of the United States” at birth and in allegiance to our nation. Remember that the Constitution requires that future Presidents be “natural born Citizens,” not just “citizens of the United States.”

Jus soli: he was born in Canada. He was therefore born a citizen of and in allegiance to Canada.

So, three different nations (The United States, Canada, and Cuba) can lay claim to Ted Cruz’s citizenship and allegiance. This means that he was not born within the full and complete political, military, and legal allegiance to the United States. With such birth circumstances, he is a “citizen of the United States” under the Fourteenth Amendment, but he is not an Article II “natural born Citizen.” Since Ted Cruz was born after the adoption of the Constitution and he is not a “natural born Citizen,” he is not eligible to be President.

Teo Bear said...

Ted Cruz is a great Senator and if I lived in Texas he would get my vote, but he is not a natural born citizen.

If Cruz gets the republican nomination no one can challenge him because of the Obama Precedent. Republicans would gleefully point to Obama, while Democrats will need to keep quite for fear that a legal challenge to Cruz could include a definition that would legally make Obama a usurper and thus undo all that Obama did. This is why Foggy is on the bandwagon, imagine a challenge to Cruz that results in a SCOTUS definition that upholds Minor, while Obama is still in office. To quote Oliver Hardy, "Well, here's another nice mess you've gotten me into!"

Doubletree says "Obama lost his British/Kenyan citizenship at age 23." But what proof does he offer? All Obama would have needed to do to keep his Kenyan citizenship was sear allegiance to Kenya and state why he could not return to Kenya at the time (Like getting an education.) Evidence shows that Obama was in Kenya when he was 22, and the person who could have accepted Obama Jr.'s oath and paperwork was at the time the Vice President of Kenya and he was a poll-bearer at Obama's fathers funeral.

We have to keep up the fight because what they are trying to do is steal the most basic right of Americans and give it to a corrupt congress to dole out as a "benefit" to anyone and everyone they want.

Carlyle said...

Thank you very much for addressing this issue. I really like both Rubio and Cruz and truly WISH they were eligible, but that does not make them so.

I have said before many times that our credibility hangs on whether we are willing to apply the rules, even against our better wishes. Otherwise we only stand to be accused of bias, selectivity, racism, or worse.

I also believe our best chance of outing Obama is to out one of our own and prove our sincerity. Further it would set a cultural and legal precedent that might open up some of the closed Obama floodgates.

Carry on! God speed!

Carlyle said...

Teo Bear:

Obama may have indeed lost his Kenyan/British citizenship along the way. He appears to have obtained Indonesian citizenship. What is critical are the following two items:

1. He appears to have never lost his Indonesian citizenship.

2. There is no evidence that he has ever had an American citizenship. And if you argue that he had one via underage mother, at a time when paternal citizenship was prime, he certainly lost it at an early age - between 2 and 6.

He could (re)become a US citizen via the naturalization process, but there are no records of that. Would adoption by Native Americans provide the missing citizenship?

Unknown said...

Mario, I won because the birthers have lost more than 200 lawsuits. I won because at least five courts now have ruled that Wong Kim Ark controls, and means that if you're born in the U.S., you're a natural born citizen regardless of the citizenship of your parents. I won because you've lost every case you ever brought regarding this issue. I won because President Obama was re-elected and re-inaugurated and is comfortably serving his second term. I won because there isn't one member of Congress or one high-ranking member of the military or one judge anywhere in America who's a birther. I won because Scalia said the rule is jus soli and Ginsburg said her grandson born in Paris is a natural born citizen and Kennedy and Breyer said all you have to do is be born here. That's four votes, not counting Sotomayor and Kagan. I won because the birther movement is OVER, pal, whether you know it or not. At Fogbow, we're already transitioning over to whackjob Sovereign Citizens, because the whackjob birthers have lost their relevance.

I won because there is ZERO chance of President Obama ever being ruled ineligible, and in fact everyone's laughing at the birthers for saying that Cruz, Jindal and Rubio are ineligible.

So you just keep on fantasizing and insisting that you won instead, Mario. You go right ahead and tell me you won, and see where it gets you.

Mario Apuzzo, Esq. said...

Foggy,

I asked that you not just tell us you won, but rater show us by what reason and analysis you did. I said that since you will not be able to present that reason and analysis (by the way, your little snark does not adequately substitute for them), it is evident that you and your foggy buddies are the ones who have failed and continue to fail in this debate.

Given your response (giving us a list of sponsors rather than reason and analysis) to what I said, it is clear that you lost.

Unknown said...

OK, Mario, I lost and you won. Congratulations. Here's a suggestion: Hold a celebration.

I'm holding a gathering of people from Fogbow on Saturday in our nation's capital. Not to celebrate - we still think we won long ago - but only because we like each other. We're friends. There are going to be 17 or 18 of us, having a nice lunch and an afternoon of conversation and friendship. We've had meetups in Phoenix and D.C. in 2010, Malibu in 2011, and New Orleans and Myrtle Beach last year. I've been to the ones in Phoenix, D.C. and Myrtle Beach, and had a great time at all three.

You should do something like that with all the friends you've made over the years since President Obama was elected. I'm sure Robert and jayjay and Stan and Doublee and ... well, not MichaelN, he lives in Australia ... but the others would probably really enjoy meeting you and celebrating your victory over us Obots.

Heck, if you did some planning, you could be the first person to gather more than 50 birthers together at once. Then maybe you could find a plaintiff to represent in another eligibility challenge, and maybe this time your victory will carry the day.

But that's just a suggestion. I'm not going to argue law with you, Mario. Too many lawyers have already argued with you, and you've declared victory over all of them. It looks to us like you think quantity of verbiage triumphs over quality of legal argument, because you write those long screeds saying the same thing over and over. But you're right, I'm not going to offer you a lot of legal reasoning as to why we won in the end. It's futile, if you know what I mean.

Mario Apuzzo, Esq. said...

I of IV

Jack Maskell stated in his Congressional Research Memo of November 14, 2011 the following conclusion:

“The weight of legal and historical authority indicates that the term ‘natural born’ citizen would mean a person who is entitled to U.S. citizenship ‘by birth’ or ‘at birth,’ either by being born ‘in’ the United States and under its jurisdiction, even those born to alien parents; by being born abroad to U.S. citizen-parents; or by being born in other situations meeting legal requirements for U.S. citizenship ‘at birth.’ Such term, however, would not include a person who was not a U.S. citizen by birth or at birth, and who was thus born an ‘alien’ required to go through the legal process of ‘naturalization’ to become a U.S. citizen.”
Jack Maskell, Qualifications for President and the “Natural Born” Citizenship Eligibility Requirement, Congressional Research Service, November 14, 2011.

http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R42097.pdf .

Eligibility supporters for Obama, Rubio, Haley, and Cruz use this Memo and this statement as the “Bible” on the meaning of a “natural born Citizen.” But, apart from all the other evidence that I have provided on the definition of a “natural born Citizen,” basic logic and the historical record as confirmed by the James Madison Administration show that they and Mr. Maskell are mistaken.

What is wrong with Maskell’s statement?

(1) It equates a “citizen by birth” and a “citizen at birth” with a “natural born Citizen.” The problem with that is that a “natural born Citizen” has only one specific constitutional definition which is a child born in a country to parents who were its “citizens” at the time of the child’s birth. But a “citizen by birth” and a “citizen at birth” have definitions which can come and go with time and are provided by the Fourteenth Amendment or Acts of Congress. Both the amendment and Acts of Congress do not define a “natural born Citizen.” Rather, they only define a “citizen of the United States” which Article II, Section 1, Clause 5 tells us is no longer eligible to be President if born after the adoption of the Constitution.

(2) It is also wrong to attempt to arrive at the definition of a “natural born Citizen” by saying that it is any “citizen” who is not naturalized. And here is the proof. First, we virtually all agree that a person who is naturalized after his or her birth as a “citizen of the United States” is not eligible to be President. The reason for that rule is that such person is born under the allegiance and citizenship of a foreign power. But we can take a “citizen by birth” and a “citizen at birth” under the Fourteenth Amendment or Act of Congress and, if not born in the country to “citizen” parents, that person will also be born under the allegiance and citizenship of a foreign power, just like the person who becomes a “citizen of the United States” by naturalization after birth. And what is worse, the former does not take an oath swearing off that foreign allegiance and citizenship, but the latter does. Yet, we are to accept the former as eligible to be President, but the latter as not eligible. Second, a person who is born out of the United States to one or two U.S. “citizen” parents who is made a “citizen of the United States” at birth by Congressional statute is considered as naturalized at birth. So that person, being naturalized, should not be eligible. But yet, the argument is that since the person was born a “citizen,” the person is a “natural born Citizen.” So now, it does not matter anymore whether one was naturalized. We can see the contradiction here.

Continued . . .

Mario Apuzzo, Esq. said...

II of IV

Third, we do not normally consider a person born in the United States to one or two alien parents who the Fourteenth Amendment declares to be a “citizen of the United States” at birth to be naturalized, because that person is automatically made a “citizen” at birth by the Constitution. But there is no denying that such a person is born with alienage inherited through one or two alien parents. Hence, that person is in reality also naturalized at birth, not by statute, but by the Fourteenth Amendment. These examples reveal the absurdity of the position that any “citizen” who is not “naturalized” is a “natural born Citizen.” Hence, common sense and logic tell us that the argument is wrong.

(3) Lastly, there is also historical proof from the James Madison Administration which demonstrates that Jack Maskell, in this statement, provides the death knell to his own argument and conclusion that a child born in the United States to alien parents is included as a “natural born Citizen.” What destroys Maskell’s argument is the contradiction that is contained in his argument. The contradiction exists between the statement,

“the term ‘natural born’ citizen would mean a person who is entitled to U.S. citizenship ‘by birth’ or ‘at birth,’ either by being born ‘in’ the United States and under its jurisdiction, even those born to alien parents”

and the statement,

“[s]uch term, however, would not include a person who was not a U.S. citizen by birth or at birth, and who was thus born an ‘alien’ required to go through the legal process of ‘naturalization’ to become a U.S. citizen.”

The contradiction is that Maskell presents these statements as being both true. The problem with Maskell’s position is that the truth of his second statement destroys the truth of his first statement. The historical evidence shows that the Founders and Framers treated a child born in the United States to alien parents as alien born and requiring the legal process of “naturalization” to become a U.S. citizen.” Hence, by Maskell’s second statement, such a child could not be a “natural born Citizen,” which contradicts his first statement that such a child could be a “natural born Citizen.” Here is the evidence of Maskell’s contradiction.

The Naturalization Acts of 1790, 1795, 1802, and 1855 provide that evidence that the truth of Maskell’s second statement destroys the truth of his first statement. These acts show that a child born in the United States to alien parents was born an alien and required to go through the legal process of naturalization to become a U.S. citizen.” Hence, since such a child was alien born and needed to go through naturalization after birth to become a U.S. citizen, Maskell’s first statement cannot be true. Early Congress treated a child born in the United States to alien parents as alien born. Congress provided in those acts that that child could naturalize and become a "citizen of the United States" after birth upon the naturalization of the child's parents if done during the child's minority and if dwelling in the United States or upon the child's own naturalization petition when becoming an adult.

Continued . . .

Mario Apuzzo, Esq. said...

III of IV

The James McClure 1811 citizenship case, upon which I have written extensively at this blog, is critically important. In that case, the James Madison Administration ruled that McClure, even though born in South Carolina on April 21, 1785, was alien born and in need of naturalization in order to become a “citizen of the United States.” That Administration ruled that McClure become under the Naturalization Act of 1802 (which contained the same operative language as those of 1790 and 1795) a “Citizen of the United States” only because his British “natural born subject” father naturalized on February 20, 1786 when his son was still a minor and dwelling in the United States. The 1811 newspaper articles on the McClure case that were printed in the Alexandria Herald and Richmond Enquirer may be found at: http://naturalborncitizen.files.wordpress.com/2011/12/alexandria-herald.pdf and http://naturalborncitizen.files.wordpress.com/2011/12/oct-1-1811.pdf . Source: http://naturalborncitizen.wordpress.com/2011/12/28/the-publius-enigma-newly-revealed-evidence-establishes-that-president-james-madisons-administration-required-citizen-parentage-to-qualify-native-born-persons-for-u-s-citizenship/

In the Alexandria Herald article, Publius wrote:

“Mr. Rodman hints, that it would have been sufficient for James McClure to have been born in the United States—he is mistaken. The law of the United States recognizes no such claim. The law of Virginia, of 1792, does—for, “all free persons born within the territory of this commonwealth,” is deemed a citizen. The law of Virginia considers him as a son of the soil. An alien, as well as a citizen, may beget a citizen, but the U. States’ act does not go so far. A man must be naturalized to make his children such.”

Publius, in 1811, living when the acts were passed by Congress, would know what Congress intended when it passed the naturalization acts. In that connection, Publius tells us that it did not matter where a child was born. Even if that child was born in the United States, if his parents were aliens, he or she was alien born. Regardless of where the child was born, the child’s parents had to naturalize in order to make their children citizens. The historical record tells us that Secretary of State, James Monroe, who was serving the James Madison Administration, eventually declared McClure alien born, but a “Citizen of the United States,” not because he was born in South Carolina on April 21, 1785, but because a few months after he was born, his British father naturalized as a “citizen of the United States.”

The James Madison Administration resolved the James McClure citizenship case by interpreting and applying the Naturalization Act of 1802 to James McClure who was born in South Carolina on April 21, 1785 and whose British father naturalized under the laws of South Carolina on February 20, 1786. The James Madison Administration ruled that McClure, even though born in the United States in 1785, was a “Citizen of the United States” through naturalization after birth under the Naturalization Act of 1802, only because his British father had naturalized after his son’s birth and when his son was dwelling in the United States. This clearly shows that the United States did not adopt any jus soli principle of citizenship, but rather adopted jus sanguinis citizenship or that which provided that children followed the citizenship of their parents. I will take Publius’ and the James Madison’s Administration’s word in 1811 on Madison’s view of birthright citizenship rather than Jack Maskell’s personal opinion in 2011.

Continued . . .

Mario Apuzzo, Esq. said...

IV of IV

These early naturalization acts are conclusive evidence on resolving the question of what is a "natural born Citizen." These early naturalization acts, which were passed by early Congress whose many members were Founders and Framers, are dispositive in demonstrating that the Founders and Framers considered only a child born in the United States to parents who were its citizens to be a "natural born Citizen." One can arrive at this conclusion by a process of elimination. All other children, whether born in the United States or out of the United States, were or could be subject to Congress's naturalization powers and could become a "citizen of the United States" either at birth or after birth. But the only child that was not so subject to Congress's naturalization power was a child born in the United States to citizen parents. Such child needed no such positive law for his or her "natural born Citizen" status. And it is that child who is a “natural born Citizen.”

So, Jack Maskell himself provides the proof that he errs in concluding that any child born in the United States who is born a citizen, even one born to alien parents, is a “natural born Citizen.” In his second statement he concedes that a “natural born Citizen” “would not include a person who was not a U.S. citizen by birth or at birth, and who was thus born an ‘alien’ required to go through the legal process of ‘naturalization’ to become a U.S. citizen.” Hence, since under the early naturalization acts any child born in the United States to alien parents was “born an alien” and needed to be naturalized, as Maskell concedes, the Founders and Framers would not have considered such a child a “natural born Citizen.” Given his second statement, Maskell admits that a child born in the United States to alien parents is not a “natural born Citizen.” But then such concession and admission demonstrates that he errs in his first statement in which he concludes that such a child is a “natural born Citizen.”

Maskell’s own words prove that he errs in concluding that a child born in the United States to alien parents is included as a “natural born Citizen.”

So, the next time someone cites and quotes the Jack Maskell memo as the last word on what is a “natural born Citizen,” tell him or her that Jack Maskell is wrong and give them the reasons why he is wrong.

Chris Strunk said...

AMERICAN versus BRITISH feudalism Common Law

The "FREEPERS" led by Mark Levin Esq. are way out on a limb in regards to the Feudal Doctrine of Perpetual Allegiance British Monarchy / European Common Law) that WE eliminated here in the New York Republic on April 20, 1777 and that WE reemphasized again on July 26, 1788 with the New York Ratification of the present US Constitution.

http://www.scribd.com/doc/94586470/Appellant-s-BRIEF-and-APPENDIX-NYS-Appellate-Division-2nd-Dept-Appeal-2012-05515

THANKS MARIO!!

Crack the FREEPERS and we break the DEM/REP Stranglehold that is being retooled to become "PROGRESSIVE" versus "CONSERVATIVE" instead.

Best regards,

Chris Strunk

Chris Strunk said...

AMERICAN Common Law versus BRITISH feudalism Common Law

The "FREEPERS" also push Rubio too led by Mark Levin Esq. are way out on a limb in regards to the Feudal Doctrine of Perpetual Allegiance British Monarchy / European Common Law) that WE eliminated here in the New York Republic on April 20, 1777 and that WE reemphasized again on July 26, 1788 with the New York Ratification of the present US Constitution.

http://www.scribd.com/doc/94586470/Appellant-s-BRIEF-and-APPENDIX-NYS-Appellate-Division-2nd-Dept-Appeal-2012-05515

THANKS MARIO!!

Crack the FREEPERS and we break the DEM/REP Stranglehold that is being retooled to become "PROGRESSIVE" versus "CONSERVATIVE" instead.

Best regards,

Chris Strunk

Unknown said...

Wow, you won against Maskell, too. That's a great victory, because Maskell's work as part of the CRS is checked and approved by his superiors, too. So you won against the whole Congressional Research Service, if anybody only knew.

See, all this time I thought a birther victory would look something like President Obama actually being removed from office, maybe even jailed. Some birthers hope he'll be executed, too. But that's what I get for focusing on actual results.

It turns out, you've won a victory if you think your arguments are stronger than the other guy's arguments, even if no judge agrees and it doesn't lead to any positive results for you. That's sort of like Linda Jordan's victory last week. Her sanctions were reduced from $13,000 to $3,500 in a settlement. She still lost in the trial court. She still lost in the Washington Supreme Court. The ruling that her case was frivolous still stands, and President Obama is still occupying the Oval Office. But she won a great birther victory, because her sanctions were reduced to something she could afford.

Birther victories like that, I have no problem with. I told you to go right ahead and claim victory, and see where it gets you; you did exactly that, and you're satisfied that you won the argument. I would have thought that was weak soup, if I was a birther. I would have thought you'd actually have to have won a court ruling, or gotten Congress to act or something, so that the allegedly ineligible President was actually removed from office.

I wouldn't even have thought I'd won an argument against Jack Maskell, unless he agreed I'd won and issued a revised opinion as to President Obama's eligibility. If the Congressional Research Service suddenly came around and agreed with you, then Congress would surely not be so intransigent about its refusal to investigate. But you won against the CRS without them changing a thing. That kind of thing can't be very easy.

You have educated me to a whole new idea about what a birther victory looks like, and I like it. I hope you have many more such victories into the future.

jayjay said...

Sir Frogbrow (or whatever the correct appellation might be):

You are once again mistaken just as you are with your grossly misbegotten belief as to what a "natural born citizen" might be ... but since birds of a feather flock together it goes without saying that you and your "friends" deserve each other's camaradiere while flitting about the country - no doubt burbling about how our putative President is for some reason, quite murky, deserving of the power of life and death over all of us (including youse guys).

I needn't actually meet Mario since in a manner of speaking I "meet" him in his well-honed and legally persuasive essays to so many of the stupid class (if the shoe fits ...) in hopes they will somehow become more informed. It is clear that he is correct, well grounded in the law and that you and buds are merely spouting political folderol - and poorly done at that. Any "meeting" of you and you gaggle of monkeys has not persuaded many at all except your own cohort of myrmidons.

Mario is correct - you are not!! And your continuous passing gas in a windstorm accomplishes nothing.

Unknown said...

fogbow, wka was ruled a citizen of the united states, not a natural born citizen, by SC in 1890s so how can you and these shady courts say he is a natural born citizen when the SC did not rule him as such and being the son of a foreign father he was not even a citizen at time of his birth? Do you know a citizen of the united states is not eligible now in article 2? The politicians run this country and these judges just do what they are told. I never heard of a soviet judge ruling against comrade stalin. Show us where the supreme court ruled a child of a foreigner was a natural born citizen. Maybe you can fudge the decision like obama did his bc and draft card. You and rest of your leftist, america hating buddys should just be happy a lying, illegal fraud/forger is in white house.

Unknown said...

Maskell also lied when writing about a case in 1850s. He conveniently forgot to mention that the european parents had naturalized a year before their child was born

MichaelN said...

There is certainly a need to send, to all the members of the US Congress and Senate, a memo exposing the Maskell LIE.

Whilst the Congress and the Senate have Maskell's memo to rely on, they will continue to support and perpetutate the false definition of natural born citizen.

Mario, please prepare a "memo", have it endorsed by prominent legal minds and maybe also by members of the public, state legislators, etc say in the form of a petition and have it delivered to each and every member of the Congress and Senate, as well as have the alternative media publicize the memo and the event of presentation to the members of the US legislature.

You have all that you need now, with all the research and logical reasoning done.

Time is of the essence.

Unknown said...

Wow, jayjay, you seem to have a real talent for name-calling. But here's where I disagree with you: To me, Mario's arguments are not "legally persuasive". To me, the real measure of a legally persuasive argument is, it actually persuades a judge or a panel of judges to agree. That's the whole point of writing legally persuasive material: to persuade judges to make legal rulings in your favor.

But Mario, in all his birther lawsuits, hasn't legally persuaded even one judge to agree with him. As we now know, the fake imaginary "two citizen parents" rule is not mentioned in any law school or civics textbook on the Constitution. Nobody mentioned it during the entire campaign before the 2008 election. Mario and about 5 or 6 other lawyers believe it, but there are 1.2 million lawyers in America. I have way more lawyers on Fogbow than all the birther lawyers put together. They write some legally persuasive stuff, too: Three of them have legally persuaded judges to rule in their favor in actual birther cases.

It's not a secret that President Obama's father was not an American citizen. That was always part of his story: His father was just visiting America to get a better education than he could get in Kenya. Everybody knows he was never a U.S. citizen.

So if Mario's arguments are correct and the legal community knew it, then Hillary was "in on it": She's a lawyer. It means that Bush's attorney general Michael Mukasey was in on it, and all the justices of the Supreme Court, and the entire Justice Department, even when Bush was in office. Nobody could claim that the Attorney General lacked standing; he is the nation's chief law enforcement officer, after all. There was plenty of time back in 2008 for some Republican lawyers to raise that argument BEFORE the election and the inauguration. Even Mario never made the "two citizen parents" argument at any time before the 2008 election.

Ted Cruz, who's the subject of this blog post, graduated magna cum laude from Harvard Law School, just like President Obama. Romney graduated cum laude from Harvard Law School. But neither of them finds Mario's arguments to be "legally persuasive". They've never even suggested that President Obama is ineligible.

The only people who think Mario's arguments are "legally persuasive" are birthers. A tiny few birthers are lawyers. But the truth is that there are so few birther lawyers and so few birthers that in three separate national elections since President Obama took office, the birthers haven't managed to elect even one birther member of Congress.

Mario thinks he's legally persuasive. You and a tiny few birthers think he's legally persuasive. But the rest of the world thinks he's full of crap. There's a REASON why the birthers have lost more than 200 lawsuits since 2008.

To me, the situation is analogous to a sports team losing 200 games in a row. The coach keeps insisting that his coaching is better than the other team's coaching, and he claims that the refs are all biased against him, and so he insists that he won all those games anyway, in his own mind. But do you know what happens to a real sports team that loses 200 games in a row? They're put out of their misery; the team gets disbanded.

When I was a boy, if you fell behind in ping-pong 0 to 7, we said you were "skunked" and the game was over. You didn't get to play to 21, if you fell that far behind. The birthers have now been skunked thirty times over. Mario has legally persuaded nobody who counts. So there's really no rational measure by which you can legitimately say that his screeds are "legally persuasive". Perhaps you'd better just stick to name-calling instead; a man should do what he does best.

Mario Apuzzo, Esq. said...

Foggy,

I of II

You complain about Jayjay’s name calling. The Obots and their lap dogs are the ones who invented it. They have attempted to win the Obama eligibility issue by appeal to race, ridicule, ad hominem attacks, pity, self-interest, fear, force, red herrings, appeal to what is perceived to be popular, false precedent, false authorities, false tradition, false statistics, false analogies, misquotes, false definitions (the list is not exhaustive). So, please do not come here and school us on the proper etiquette of debate.

Yours is all repetitive Obot propaganda tripe. You do not have to tell us about how some lower courts have ruled on the question of what is a “natural born Citizen.” Rather than make and address substantive legal arguments on the question of what is an Article II “natural born Citizen,” you just keep going back to lower court rulings in your vain attempt to close down legitimate discussion in the debate. We already know what the hurried result of these cases was. I have already stated that I respectfully disagree with those decisions. The question is whether their decisions are correct. Your simply repeating what that result is without actually demonstrating through thorough and well-reasoned legal analysis that the result is correct adds absolutely nothing here or elsewhere.

Yes, it is not a secret that Obama’s father was not a U.S. citizen when Obama was born. And that is why Obama cannot be a “natural born Citizen” as the Founders and Framers defined one. Now, if you want to change the definition without any constitutional amendment because it suits your political agenda, that is a different story.

The U.S. Supreme Court Heller decision informs us on how we are to interpret the Constitution. There is nothing in the decision which says that we are to look to the personal opinions of current establishment politicians for help or that it matters more that those politicians went to some special school and or even what their grades were.

You state that “[t]he only people who think Mario’s arguments are ‘legally persuasive’ are birthers.” You add that “the rest of the world thinks he’s [Mario’s] full of crap.” What a presumptuous statement. Can you tell us how you came to such a conclusion? By what powers and technique were you able to question all people in America and the rest of the world so that you can come to such an absurd conclusion? And you also tell us that there is not “even one members of Congress” who is a birther. Are you telling us that there is not one member of Congress who under Article VI took an “Oath or Affirmation, to support this Constitution?” After all, is that not what a birther is, someone who wants the Constitution, the rule of law, and the integrity of our elections respected, regardless of any one candidate’s irrelevant unique personal circumstances.

Continued . . .

Mario Apuzzo, Esq. said...

II of II

Your sport analogy is a poor one. Depending on what sport is involved, winners and losers of athletic events are easily selected (e.g., spring runners (objective) versus figure skaters (subjective)). Let us use your ping-pong (table tennis) sport since it is virtually objective. It becomes quite evident, even to a child, who is the winner and loser if a ping-pong match. We just objectively count up the points obtained under the legally prescribed rules and that is the end of the game. With a constitutional law issue, the matter is not so easy. There is no counting of points by any objective mechanism. There are no clearly defined rules by which any counting is done. And the “game” never really comes to an end. Even “settled” decisions are later revisited and changed because either later perceived to have been erroneously made or because of some new circumstances.

By the way, the rulers in Russia banned ping-pong from about 1930 to 1950 because they believed that playing the game adversely affected viewers’ eyesight. Connors, Dupois, & Morgan (1992). The Olympics Factbook: A spectator's guide to the summer games (p.451). Washington, DC: Visible Ink Press. So much for what rulers say is correct actually being correct.

Foggy, next time try a legal argument, which you pejoratively call a “screed” because you are not capable of making one, that actually adds something to the debate, rather than just repeating the conclusions (not to be confounded with thorough and well-reasoned legal analysis) of some lower courts, current politicians, or offering your personal Obot tripe.

Carlyle said...

To a certain extent Mario and Fogbow Foggy are talking past each other and using different language.

There is distinct (and often wide) difference between a practical WIN and a theoretical WIN. The first has to do solely with the rulings of the court (or even their refusal to hear cases on their merits). The second is based solely on logic and sometimes even morals or ethics - i.e. the true definition of RIGHT and WRONG.

There are innumerable cases of winning and losing being different than right an wrong. Sometimes these are caught and people even released from jail or death row.

I think we can all concede the fact that the courts have been 100% favorable to The Obama in one way or another. And further, perhaps that is unlikely to change, and The Obama will never be outed.

On the other hand, we can discuss legal theory, practical application of law, intent of the founders, and all that - and conclude the Right and Correct answer.

A consistent theme I see is Mario inviting Foggy to engage in the latter discussion. We all know what the courts have done so far - that does not need to be rehashed - neither does it have any bearing whatsoever on Right and Wrong.

I will further claim that "birtherism" is not dead. From a practical sense, it may be, but as a discussion of Right and Wrong, it will not die. One of the reasons to keep discussing it is that someone may be inspired to identify just the opening, the handle if you will, to grab this thing and force the courts or congress to finally hear the evidence (and, correspondingly, the lack of evidence) and come to a correct conclusion.

And if Foggy is going to keep identifying court cases (hundreds?) I would like to hear of any that objectively considered the merits. Until that happens and a suitably high court makes a definitive ruling on NBC and The Obama, I think it is difficult to claim a win. It seems the most you can claim is a stalemate.


Doublee said...

I see problems with jus soli as the sole criterion for natural born citizenship as some seem to argue. In fact, I see problems with jus soli as the criterion for mere citizenship.

To put it simply, jus soli is a coercive measure that should not be permitted in a free society.

There are many visitors to the United States who are here only temporarily. These include people who are here on student, work, tourist or diplomatic visas.

If those visitors should happen to become parents during their temporary stay, it makes no sense to force citizenship on the child when that child is going to be returned home with his parents to be raised as a citizen of his parents’ country.

The U.S. State Department has elucidated some of the problems that arise with dual citizenship:

The U.S. Government recognizes that dual nationality exists but does not encourage it as a matter of policy because of the problems it may cause. Claims of other countries on dual national U.S. citizens may conflict with U.S. law, and dual nationality may limit U.S. Government efforts to assist citizens abroad. The country where a dual national is located generally has a stronger claim to that person's allegiance.

However, dual nationals owe allegiance to both the United States and the foreign country. They are required to obey the laws of both countries.


http://travel.state.gov/travel/cis_pa_tw/cis/cis_1753.html

There is a bill currently in Congress that attempts to clarify the meaning of “subject to the jurisdiction” in the 14th amendment. HR 140 says the following:

b) Definition- Acknowledging the right of birthright citizenship established by section 1 of the 14th amendment to the Constitution, a person born in the United States shall be considered ‘subject to the jurisdiction’ of the United States for purposes of subsection (a)(1) if the person is born in the United States of parents, one of whom is

‘(1) a citizen or national of the United States;

‘(2) an alien lawfully admitted for permanent residence in the United States whose residence is in the United States;

‘(3) an alien performing active service in the armed forces (as defined in section 101 of title 10, United States Code).’


For those who seem to think that person born on U.S. soil is the sole criterion for natural born citizenship, the above law contradicts that notion.

Natural born citizenship is a construct of the Constitution and requires an amendment to change. I see the above law as a clarification of the ruling in Wong Kim Ark and it is therefore not in conflict with the Constitution.

If this law were applied to Obama, he would be declared a citizen under criterion 1 of HR 140.

Mario Apuzzo, Esq. said...

Doublee,

I of II

Notice how the proposed bill HR 140 says “birthright citizenship established by section 1 of the 14th amendment to the Constitution.” That “birthright citizenship” is not the same as “natural born Citizen.” The unanimous U.S. Supreme Court in Minor v. Happersett said that “birthright citizenship,” which it called “natural-born citizen,” was not defined by the Constitution which in 1875 already included the Fourteenth Amendment. Rather, it said that the meaning of a “natural-born citizen” was found in the common law with which the Framers were familiar when they drafted the Constitution. The Court said that under that common law a “natural-born citizen” was a child born in a country to parents who were its “citizens” at the time of the child’s birth and that all other persons were born “aliens or foreigners.” So it is that definition which the Court confirmed to be for federal purposes the single definition of a “natural-born citizen.” Note that under that common law all other persons were born “aliens or foreigners.” That definition was based on American national common law which had its genesis in the law of nations as codified by Emer de Vattel in Section 212 of his The Law of Nations, and not on any state law that may have relied upon colonial English common law with its “natural born subject.” Any definition of the clause promulgated by any state court for state purposes (e.g., for inheritance, real estate transactions, etc.) could not trump that definition. For example, the New York state court in Lynch v. Clark, 1 Sandf.Ch. 583(1844), a case dealing with real property inheritance rights in New York, relying upon the colonial English common law, in dicta gave a definition of a “natural-born citizen” which relied only upon birth in the United States, with no reference to the citizenship of the child’s parents. But clearly, that decision, which dealt with local state issues, cannot stand above the unanimous U.S. Supreme Court in Minor which in 1875 confirmed the uniform national definition of a “natural-born citizen” which applied to all men and women throughout the United States.

HR 140 is not a definition of a “natural born Citizen.” Rather, it confirms an exception to the American national common law rule which defines the Founders’ and Framers’ “birthright citizenship,” an exception which was created by the U.S. Supreme Court in U.S. v. Wong Kim Ark (1898). The Court there created that exception by liberally construing the “subject to the jurisdiction” clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. The Court found that parents who were domiciled and residing in the United States (not U.S. “citizens”) were “subject to the jurisdiction thereof.” Hence, their child born in the United States was also “subject to the jurisdiction thereof.” The Court therefore held that, while the child was not “natural born,” such a child by the fact of being born in the United States was as much a “citizen” as that “natural born” child and therefore a “citizen of the United States” at birth by virtue of the amendment. So, the Court deviated from the Founders’ and Framers’ “birthright citizenship” and carved out another form of it, one based on a child being born in the United States to parents who were not “citizens” of the nation, but rather only its domiciliaries and residents. By this new form of “birthright citizenship,” Wong Kim Ark did not amend the Founders’ and Framers’ American national common law definition of a “natural-born citizen.” Rather, it only created an exception to it which allowed children born in the United States to domiciled and resident alien parents to also enjoy “birthright citizenship.” But this new type of “birthright citizenship” recognized its beneficiary to be born a “citizen of the United States,” not to be born a “natural born Citizen,” which would have required a Constitutional amendment.

Continued . . .

Mario Apuzzo, Esq. said...

II of II

HR 140 would make sure that if a child is going to receive the benefit of Wong “birthright citizenship” (“citizen of the United States” at birth), at least one of the child’s parent at the time of the child’s birth be (1) a “citizen or national of the United States; (2) a permanent resident lawfully admitted to the United States and actually residing in the United States; or (3) an alien actively serving the U.S. armed forces. Following the doctrine of merger of the wife’s citizenship into that of the husband which was not abandoned until the Cable Act of 1922, Wong actually required both parents to be domiciled and residing in the United States. This bill would require only one parent to be either a “citizen” or legal permanent resident, and also would extend “birthright citizenship” to a child with one alien parent actively serving the U.S. armed forces.

But again, this bill does not directly confirm the definition of a “natural born Citizen.” Nor does it amend it, which can be done only by constitutional amendment. It only confirms the Wong Kim Ark “birthright citizenship” exception to a “natural born Citizen,” allowing it to be codified and expanded. By doing so, the bill would declare to be an alien and not a “citizen of the United States” any child born in the United States to two alien parents, with at least one not being a legal permanent resident (LPR) or actively serving in the U.S. armed forces.

jayjay said...

Senor Froggy:

I have surely not yet begun to "call names" as you so inelegantly put it and I see no reason to waste either of my two brain sides doing so in your case. You are quite like the infamous Doctor of Duplicity Kevin Davidson (aka dr. c) who is no doubt part of your crowd also and well-known to you.

And, frankly, who gives a rats-rearend as to who has been granted a "laude" or from which "cum". That merely means the individual has been well-immersed in liberal group-think of the particular institution and not that he knows anything effusive and that award, after all, is granted BY the far-left loonies "educating" (or perhaps "brainwashing" is the more correct term) the particular candidate.

You also seem to not understand that our de facto Prez has never proven in any rigorous manner in a recognized court of law by a thorough adversarial examination of concrete evidence that he is in fact qualified to hold the office he now occupies. He and his admirers have instead only indulged in a series of shenanigans, as do you, to attempt to hide any facts and deflect the truth from being sought. This sort of tactic is well known as is called many things such as offering "Red Herrings".

Indeed, most observers with any shred of common sense would realize that such is the case but instead you and your platitude-regurgitating-artist pals keep harping on the not-fact of their being "200 birther losses" (you call them erroneously "games") without either defining what a "birther" might be (it could as easily apply to or own crowd you see - but you seem to not grasp that and try to use it as a pejorative ) and you fail to recognize that what you characterize as "200 losses" are in fact in large measure failure by the particular courts to take up the matter for actual judicial consideration with items such as evidence and not merely the Ping-Pong score from other games who have also refused to take up the meat of the matter ... perhaps through cowardice/intimidation.

For myself I find it persuasive that not only do Mario's essays ring true and do none of your "arguments" qualify as a sockdolager, but that the subject of the scrutiny at issue routinely does the old soft-shoe to avoid the issue. Why not merely open up all of the records in question to prove his bona fides???

There is an obvious answer, you see. Perhaps you will eventually realize it, but then it is said that "stupid is forever". Better stick to Ping-Pong, Senor Froggy.

Unknown said...

Mario, you said: "You complain about Jayjay’s name calling."

No, I did not. I observed it, and I encouraged him to continue. Where in the world did you get the idea that was a complaint? Are your powers of observation that weak?

You also said: "The Obots and their lap dogs are the ones who invented it."

Wow. We invented name-calling, huh? Here I thought people in the 1860's called Lincoln "the Original Gorilla". I thought name-calling was as old as language itself. I'm shocked, shocked I tell you, to learn that we invented it.

Then you said: "They have attempted to win the Obama eligibility issue by appeal to race, ridicule, ad hominem attacks, pity, self-interest, fear, force, red herrings, appeal to what is perceived to be popular, false precedent, false authorities, false tradition, false statistics, false analogies, misquotes, false definitions (the list is not exhaustive)."

Is that a complaint? Poor you!

Finally, you said: "Rather than make and address substantive legal arguments on the question of what is an Article II “natural born Citizen,” you just keep going back to lower court rulings in your vain attempt to close down legitimate discussion in the debate."

That's only partially correct, because there are plenty of appellate court rulings that also denied birther claims. The Supreme Court has a neon sign on it's roof now: "NO, WE'RE NOT GOING TO HEAR YOUR STUPID BIRTHER CASES." But you're right that I rely on court rulings, and don't make legal arguments of my own. I explained why yesterday. Look upthread. I don't make legal arguments. All I do is state what the reality is.

I'm done with you, Mario. Please continue to live in your fantasy world where your legal arguments are infinitely more valid than those of the lawyers who have won more than 200 birther cases. I think you're delusional, but it's not a problem in my life.

My guy was re-elected and re-inaugurated, and is serving his second term of office. You're no threat to him; as I've said, there's zero chance that any judge in this great land of ours is going to pay the slightest bit of attention to you. In fact, I advise you to stay out of court with this issue in the future; judges have started giving real sanctions in birther cases, because they're frivolous.

See ya around, Mario. Buh bye!

Unknown said...

fogbow showed no supreme court case that said a child of a foreigner is a natural born citizen. 98% of the people i have talked to about this did not know what a NBC is but after i explain to them that the Framers did not want anyone who was born a foreign citizen as CiC they understood. The only one who did not agree with me was a lib haha who said congress would not have confirmed him if he was not eligible. His forgerys, fake social and not being a NBC with a foreign father should really scare all americans that the game is rigged and the corp media, the courts and congress all look the other way. People have to wake up

Unknown said...

so if a canadian couple crosses the border and the wife gives birth in a vermont hospital, stays for a few days and then go back to their home in canada does that make their child a natural born citizen of US? According to foggy thinking it would.

thalightguy said...

Alfred Pierre Jacob was born in Philadelphia, PA on July 10, 1855 of French parents, his father registered him in the French consulate as a Frenchman; in 1884 the U.S. Dept. of State in correspondence with France explained to them that Mr. Jacob became a naturalized U.S. citizen on December 2, 1874 as a result of his father’s formal naturalization.

The correspondence can be read here, Pages 29-31:

http://www.ebooksread.com/authors-eng/joshua-rose/pattern-makers-assistant-embracing-lathe-work-branch-work-core-work--goo/page-29-pattern-makers-assistant-embracing-lathe-work-branch-work-core-work--goo.shtml

js said...


A Republic is representative government ruled by law (the Constitution). A democracy is direct government ruled by the majority (mob rule).

When popular opinion of an individual overrides the qualifications for him/her to hold the office of POTUS, then we are, effectively, a Democracy.

The founding fathers held that form of government as one of the worst forms of government. That is why we are a Republic. Its up to us to keep it that way.

MichaelN said...

@ thalightguy

Re-posted here....

http://www.city-data.com/forum/politics-other-controversies/1408855-birther-brigade-going-after-rubio-now-187.html#post28871367

Doublee said...

Mario,
I must admit that I am a bit puzzled by your response to my previous post about HR 140. In fact, I am having difficulty understanding what you think I said versus what I thought I said!

I shall start here.

I accept the definition of natural born citizen as recalled by Chief Justice Waite in Minor v. Happersett.

I have had arguments on other blogs in which the other poster argued that birth on U.S. soil was sufficient to make a person a natural born citizen. In other words, in their minds birthright citizenship equals natural born citizenship.

The intent of my post was to refute that equivalency.

I began with stating my objections to unconditional birthright citizenship. I believe that citizenship should be a conscious choice. It should not be forced on someone by accident of birth as in the case of someone born to temporary visitors to the United States, that is, those who are citizens of another country.

To put it another way, those who are born in the U.S. to temporary visitors should be not be forced to be a natural born citizen and be eligible to be president.

It has been my understanding that the phrase “subject to the jurisdiction” in the 14th amendment has lacked a rigorous definition. I saw HR 140 as an attempt to add clarity to that definition.

I will admit that I did not give any consideration to the phrase “Acknowledging the right of birthright citizenship established by section 1 of the 14th amendment to the Constitution...” Upon reflection, it appears to assume facts not in evidence. The 14th amendment did not grant unconditional citizenship to all those born in the U.S. It granted citizenship only to those born subject to the jurisdiction of the U.S.

The phrase should have read “Acknowledging that the phrase in the 14th amendment ‘subject to the jurisdiction’ lacks a formal definition…”

This leads me to rethink what I originally wrote. I had assumed that HR 140 was not a substitution for an amendment to the Constitution. But if HR 140 does contradict the original definition of “subject to the jurisdiction”, then it is modifying the Constitution and an amendment should be required.

The problem is what is the original definition and can that be determined with constitutional certainty?

Mario Apuzzo, Esq. said...

There are some Obama eligibility supporters who argue that we can change the definition of a “natural born Citizen” without a constitutional amendment. The argument is that the U.S. Supreme Court can simply interpret the “natural born Citizen” clause differently as it has differently interpreted other matters in our history (e.g. separate but equal, abortion, etc.). The problem that I see with this argument is that with the “natural born Citizen” clause, the Founders and Framers, regardless of their purpose or motive, gave us a specific definition, just like they gave us the minimums of 35 years of age and 14 years of residency to be met by any person wanting to be President. As the historical record and case law of the U.S. Supreme Court demonstrate, that definition was a child born in a country to parents who were its “citizens” at the time of the child’s birth. If the high Court cannot change 35 years of age and 14 years of residency, why should it be able to give us a definition of a “natural born Citizen” which is different from what the Founders and Framers inserted into the Constitution and which became part of the supreme law of the land?

Additionally, a constitutional provision such as the “natural born Citizen” clause is not a statutory one. The nation can simply chose to ignore its “bad” statutory laws like it does in so many instances. But being a Constitutional Republic, a nation cannot ignore its Constitution as written and intended. The Declaration of Independence refers to “unalienable rights” that emanate from “the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God.” It also says that “among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.” It made sure to include, “among these are,” indicating that there are more that are not listed. While our Constitution does not list all the fundamental rights that persons living under it have, for fundamental rights whatever they may be come from the laws of nature, it does give those people a guarantee that whatever fundamental rights that may be proven to exist in any given time period are protected from governmental tyranny. The Ninth Amendment explicitly recognizes this and gives the people that added protection of these rights. So, the Constitution is that document which protects these rights, whatever they may be, from government abridgment, violation, and deprivation, and from government failure and denial to equally protect those rights for all the people.

The Founders and Framers had enough wisdom to know that past generations cannot forever bind future generations, especially with change that is brought about by an evolving society. The Founders and Framers placed into the Constitution at Article V the constitutional mechanism by which the people are supposed to amend their Constitution. This amendment process needs to be protected and adhered to if America is to remain a Constitutional Republic and not morph into a pure democracy wherein matters are decided by mob rule. If we can simply ignore the “natural born Citizen” clause, then there is no stopping us from ignoring other parts of the Constitution for whatever justification one may present. What the Constitution says is not something which is supposed to be forgotten because it is politically convenient to do so. Let us follow the amendment procedure rather than violate the document by political stealth masquerading as positive social evolution.



James said...

Foggy,

Most if not all of Congress know there are serious problems with Obama. However, none of them will touch the issue Why? A couple of reasons.

1. Media attack and ridicule
2. Orders from John Boenher
3. Most likely - Obama has already served 4 years. No member of Congress is willing to question Obama because there would be riots in the streets and complete chaos and break down of the government.

Unknown said...

With respect to #3 you might be right. Certainly those who are using this excuse want it to be the case. Let's say you have designed a rocket and space craft to take several people to Mars. At the last moment an argument breaks out among the scientists. One of them maintains that a part need to be retooled in order to work properly--and that could take several weeks. All the other scientists disagree saying that it will cause all sort of trouble as the media is set for a certain day and public officials have already arrived. And more of this sort of thing. One even has a vacation soon and would have to postpone it. Now if you knew the consequences of the part staying as it is might cause the operation to fail and kill the people involved what would you do?

The answer is really simple. You would be morally obligated to see to it that the part was fixed properly. Now the government of this nation is to some extent like a machine. It will not work properly if one of its parts is not right. And the consequences could be the death and destruction of the nation itself. We simply do not know for sure. But we do know that this part is corrupt and will not be able to function properly. We have to trust the wisdom of the designers that knew what they were doing. Otherwise, we risk the welfare of millions. It is certainly that serious. So those that use #3 are also assuming that it really does not matter. Like the scientists they are ready to risk the nation in order to prevent an imagined chaos. They are gambling with our lives and the fate of the nation. And they have little faith in the American citizen.

Mario Apuzzo, Esq. said...

Thalightguy,

Wong recognized that the naturalization acts did not contain any language which excluded from its reach children born in the United States. The Court said:

“The Constitution and statutes do not contemplate double allegiance, and how can such election be determined? By section 1993 of the Revised Statutes, the citizenship of the children of our citizens born abroad may be terminated in that generation by their persistent abandonment of their country, while, by sections 2167 and 2168, special provision is made for the naturalization of alien minor residents, on attaining majority, by dispensing with the previous declaration of intention and allowing three years of minority on the five years' residence required, and also for the naturalization of children of aliens whose parents have died after making declaration of intention. By section 2172, children of naturalized citizens are to be considered citizens.

While, then, the naturalization of the father carries with it that of his minor children, and his declaration of intention relieves them from the preliminary steps for naturalization, and minors are allowed to count part of the residence of their minority on the whole term required, and are relieved from the declaration of intention, the statutes make no provision for formal declaration of election by children born in this country of alien parents on attaining majority.”

Wong Kim Ark, at 722.

This quote recognized the naturalization statutes’ broad language, “naturalization of the father carries with it that of his minor children,” which on its face made the statute apply to children born in and out of the United States. This was the same language found in the Naturalization Acts of 1790, 1795, and 1802. We saw in the James McClure citizenship case of 1811 how the James Madison Administration ruled that the Naturalization Act of 1802 also applied to children born in the United States, finding those children born in the United States to alien parents as alien born and in need of naturalization. What Wong did, to get around having to concede that the 1855 statute, like those of 1790, 1795, and 1802, treated children born in the United States to alien parents as alien born and in need of naturalization, is say that the statute did not explicitly say that children born in the United States to alien parents had to make a declaration of election of U.S. citizenship upon reaching the age of majority. But such reasoning does not prove that the naturalization statute did not apply to children born in the United States.

The fact that the statute did not explicitly compel “formal declaration of election by children born in this country of alien parents on attaining majority” does not mean that Congress did not mean what it meant when it expressly said, that the “naturalization of the father carries with it that of his minor children.” “Naturalization of the father carries with it that of his minor children” is language that Congress meant to apply to all children, regardless of where born. It Congress meant to limit that language, it would have simply referred to the child being born in or out of the United States. It made no such distinction, so therefore, it meant to have the statute apply to all children no matter where born.

The Court’s position on how to read Congress’s language is also contradictory. The statute also did not say that formal declaration of election had to be made only by children born out of the United States. But yet, the Court so concludes.

So for the Court to say that the statute only applied to children born out of the United States, without addressing the broad language of the statute, without providing any evidence that Congress intended to limit the statute to children born out of the United States, given the existence of the James McClure citizenship case, and putting forth an argument that is contradictory to how it said the statute had to be construed, casts grave doubts upon the soundness of the Court’s reasoning and conclusions.

mtngoat61 said...

Fogbow Foggy is a Communist. His favorite hat is a red ball cap with the Hammer & Sickle on it. He is also grumpy. See this video of Foggy on one of his better days: http://youtu.be/TWIQ0AenhQ4 Others at TheFogBow teach the writings of Karl Marx and Saul Alinsky in college courses. They engage in perception management and social engineering techniques to try and confuse people They are a communist cell spreading disinformation to help their great leader, Obama. They will do and say anything ... lie and worse to further their campaign. That Foggy is here scrolling your blog means he fears your words for they ring the truth. Foggy the commie and FogBow hatchet man will never engage you logically. He is a gas lighter and enjoys distorting reality and the truth.

cfkerchner said...

The Doctrine of Natural Law or of “Nature and Nature’s God”, which is why Obama is not eligible! | CDR Kerchner (Ret)'s Blog
http://cdrkerchner.wordpress.com/2013/03/29/the-doctrine-of-natural-law-or-of-nature-and-natures-god-which-is-why-obama-is-not-eligible/

CDR Charles Kerchner, P.E. (Retired)
Lehigh Valley PA USA
http://www.protectourliberty.org/

Carlyle said...

Mario -

I think you will find the logic of the "constitution interpreters" to be something like:

1. The constitution is very liquid. Not only is that what we want, but in actuality that is they way it has been for decades and decades.

2. Over the years many many things have been agreed and established in and around the constitution. Conservatives would say that a lot, or even most, of these are unconstitutional. We say say they are all consistent at least with the spirit of the constitution and various emanations and penumbras.

3. We don't teach The Constitution in elite universities anymore. To become a constitutional scholar you must become thoroughly steeped in Supreme Court decisions and precedents. Period.

4. Given all those many things, The Obama Question turns on a tiny technicality. Nobody in his right mind would press this. Further, applying such a technicality to a racial candidate would be particularly ill-received.

-----------------

Given the premises and current practice of constitutional law, these seem like powerful and insurmountable hurdles.

Mario Apuzzo, Esq. said...

Carlyle,

I of II

The interpretation of the Constitution depends on what you call “technicalities. Recently, we have even seen a court give significant constitutional meaning to the word “the.” Noel Canning v. NLRB, ___ F.3d ____ , No. 12-1115 (D.C. Cir. 2013) just recently explained the constitutional meaning of “the” in the context of differentiating “the Recess” from “recess,” and by doing so found President Obama’s NLRB appointments unconstitutional.

In any event, I do not see the debate about “the” definition of a “natural born Citizen” as one of mere technicality. Rather, I see it as one involving the Founders’ and Framers’ desire to best assure the preservation of their new constitutional republic through that clause. It therefore becomes critically important that we discover “the” meaning of an Article II “natural born Citizen” that they had in mind when they inserted the clause into the Constitution and apply that meaning to de facto President, Barack Obama, and others wanting to be President.

In this connection, what is critically important to note is that Jack Maskell’s thesis, that has been accepted by several lower courts that ruled on the definition of a “natural born Citizen” and whether Obama meets it, that any “citizen at birth” or “citizen from birth” is a “natural born Citizen,” regardless of the allegiance and citizenship of the child’s parents, does not find support in the Founders’ and Framers’ understanding of “the Law of Nature and of Nature’s God.” See Commander Kerchner’s comment and link posted above. Fundamentally stated, the Founders and Framers, with a profound belief in “the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God,” would not have so separated children from their natural creators, their mother and father. In their eyes, by the law of nature, the child belonged to and came from his or her parents and not from a piece of land somewhere in the world. And it was not a piece of land, but rather the children’s parents who would decide by and through free will their children’s allegiance and citizenship, which they would carry with them until their age of majority at which time they were free to choose another. It was the law of nature which was the basis of their belief in “partus sequitur patrem,” i.e., the children followed the condition of the father (meaning parents given that the wife’s citizenship always followed that of her husband and so both parents would have the same citizenship). Since the Founders and Framers tied future presidential eligibility, which brought with it being the Commander in Chief of the Military, to the person being a “natural born Citizen,” they believed that it was only a child born in the country to “citizen” parents who was born with sole allegiance to the United States. The totality of the historical and legal texts from before, during, and after the Founding of our nation demonstrates that this moral and political philosophy was the basis for the Founders’ and Framers’ definition of a “natural born Citizen” which the unanimous U.S. Supreme Court in Minor v. Happesett in 1875 and majority and dissent in U.S. v. Wong Kim Ark (1898) confirmed to be a child born in a country to parents who were its “citizens” at the moment of the child’s birth.

Continued . . .

Mario Apuzzo, Esq. said...

II of II

So, the Founders and Framers required that the child not only be born in the United States, but that he also be born to a father and mother who were both U.S. “citizens” at the moment of the child’s birth. It did not matter how the parents obtained their U.S. citizenship. It made no difference whether a parent’s U.S. citizenship was inherited at birth by natural law or acquired at birth or after birth by positive law. As long as both parents were “citizens,” that was sufficient. Both parents had to be “citizens” prior to the child’s birth so that under U.S. law and the law of nations, uniting and merging jus sanguinis (allegiance and citizenship inherited from parents) and jus soli (allegiance and citizenship acquired from the place of birth) into just one nation, the child was born with sole political, military, and legal allegiance to the United States. That meant that no other nation on earth could claim that child’s allegiance and citizenship which normally brought with it political, military, and legal duties to that foreign nation.

The only change that we have had to a “natural born Citizen” is one that impacts how parents obtain their U.S. citizenship so as to be able to procreate “natural born Citizens.” It is an ancient notion that wives followed the condition of their husbands. So, if an alien woman married a U.S. citizen husband, upon her marriage she automatically acquired his U.S. citizenship. Also, if a U.S. citizen woman married an alien husband, she lost her U.S. citizenship. On the contrary, Justice Story said in 1830 that “marriage with an alien, whether a friend or an enemy, produce[d] no dissolution of the native allegiance of the wife.” Shanks v. Dupont, 3 Pet. 242, 246 (1830) (Story, J.). Surely, then the same can be said about an alien husband marrying a U.S. citizen wife, that the marriage did not produce a dissolution of the foreign native allegiance of the husband. Our U.S. Supreme Court did not agree with Justice Story and, finding that the wife followed the condition of her husband, held that “[t]he identity of husband and wife is an ancient principle of our jurisprudence.” Mackenzie v. Hare, 239 U. S. 299, 311 (1915). But regardless of who was right or wrong, our positive laws, i.e., our citizenship and naturalization laws, now treat women differently than how they treated them during the Founding. Since 1922 with the Cable Act, women have had their citizenship separated from that of their husband’s which makes it more difficult for a woman to have U.S. allegiance and citizenship before the child’s birth if she is not a “natural born Citizens” or at least a “citizen of the United States” at birth or after birth. Under our current laws, with no spouse automatically acquiring the citizenship of the other, in addition to the child having to be born in the United States (or its jurisdictional equivalent), both father and mother must independently inherit or acquire their own U.S. allegiance and citizenship prior to giving birth to any child in the United States if that child is to be born to U.S. “citizen” parents which cuts off all foreign claims of allegiance and citizenship under U.S. law, foreign law, and international law, and thereby allows that child to be declared an Article II “natural born Citizen” and someday eligible to be President and Commander in Chief of the Military.

Whether these fundamental principles are respected and applied depends upon the conscience and wisdom of the nation. A person’s race or color should play no role in that critical decision.

Mario Apuzzo, Esq. said...

I of II

I continue to see on the internet articles which argue that persons who can meet the requirements of Congressional Act, 8 U.S.C. Section 1401, so that they are a “citizen of the United States” at birth under that statute, are automatically Article II “natural born Citizens.” For example, see J.R. Dunn, “Citizenship: The Last Word,” at http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2013/03/citizenship_the_last_word.html . This argument is erroneous.

The unanimous U.S. Supreme Court in Minor v. Happersett (1875) spoke in no uncertain terms about what the common law with which the Framers were familiar when they wrote the Constitution said concerning birthright citizenship. It said:

“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.”

Id. at 167. Hence, the Court told us that at common law, any child born in the United States who was not born to parents who were its “citizens” at the moment of the child’s birth was an “alien or foreigner” and in need of naturalization. This common law rule which treated children born in the country to alien parents as alien born and in need of naturalization was codified in the Naturalization Acts of 1790, 1795, 1802, and 1855.

After defining a “natural born Citizen” and telling us that at common law anyone who did not meet that definition was an “alien or foreigner,” the court added:

“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. It is sufficient, for everything we have now to consider, that all children, born of citizen parents within the jurisdiction, are themselves citizens.”

Id. at 167-68. In this second statement we know that the Court was no longer referring to the “common law.” First, those children were neither a “citizens” nor a “natural-born citizens” under the very common law to which it had just referred in the same paragraph. Second, the Court added the phrase “born within the jurisdiction,” a phrase which was directed to the Fourteenth Amendment’s “subject to the jurisdiction thereof” clause. Hence, the only thing to be compared to the common law that defined a “natural-born citizen” given what the Court added after defining the clause was the Fourteenth Amendment. We know that almost every member of the Minor Court had been part of the Court in The Slaughterhouse Cases, which in dicta said: “The phrase, ‘subject to its jurisdiction’ was intended to exclude from its operation children of ministers, consuls, and citizens or subjects of foreign States born within the United States." The Slaughterhouse Cases, 83 U.S. 36, 73 (1873). So, in The Slaughterhouse Cases, the Court had established in dicta that being born “within the jurisdiction” was not the equivalent to being born “subject to the jurisdiction.” Hence, Minor, by bringing up on its own this other class of potential “citizens” was now referring to a potentially new class of birthright citizenship, one possibly created by the Fourteenth Amendment, but which Minor said did not exist at common law and which had been in doubt as to its existence under the Fourteenth Amendment. In any event, we also know that this other class of citizenship which depended upon the Fourteenth Amendment, however it eventually came to be defined, was not equivalent to the “natural-born citizen” class, for the Court told us that the Constitution, which then already included the Fourteenth Amendment, did not define a “natural-born citizen,” but rather the common law did;

Continued . . .

Mario Apuzzo, Esq. said...

II of II

under that common law, any child born in the United States to alien parents was an “alien or foreigner,” which meant that child could not possibly be a “natural-born citizen;” and Minor referred to the members of that other class as being “citizens,” which we know it equated to a “citizen of the United States,” for when referring to Acts of Congress which defined a “citizen of the United States, Minor called those persons acted upon by those statutes as “citizens.” So, Minor left for another day defining that potentially new birthright citizenship class under the Fourteenth Amendment, which again, was a “citizen” class, but not the “natural-born citizen” class.

U.S. v. Wong Kim Ark (1898) then in 1898 answered the Fourteenth Amendment question left open by Minor and defined that new birthright citizenship class under the Fourteenth Amendment, holding that a child born in the United States to domiciled and resident alien parents was a “citizen of the United States” at birth by virtue of the Fourteenth Amendment. Wong Kim Ark, distinguishing a “citizen of the United States” at birth under the Fourteenth Amendment from an Article II “natural born Citizen, confirmed Minor’s definition of a “natural-born citizen” and did not disturb it. So, Minor told us that any new Fourteenth Amendment “citizen of the United States” was not and could not be equivalent to a “natural-born citizen,” and Wong Kim Ark confirmed that.

So, we can see that Minor confirmed the definition of a “natural-born citizen” which existed under the common law with which the Framers were familiar when they drafted the Constitution and Wong Kim Ark carved out an exception to that common law definition for a child, who under that very common law was an “alien or foreigner.” Wong Kim Ark, by holding that a child born in the United States to domiciled and resident alien parents was a “citizen of the United States” at birth created a different class of birthright citizenship. And it did so by resorting to the Fourteenth Amendment and its “subject to the jurisdiction” clause rather than to that common law, and giving that clause a more liberal interpretation (the Court found born “within the jurisdiction” to be virtually equivalent to born “subject to the jurisdiction”). But while that new Fourteenth Amendment class of citizenship was also birthright citizenship, not meeting the common law definition of a “natural-born citizen,” it was not of the “natural-born citizen” class.

8 U.S.C. Section 1401 is a Congressional statute that defines birthright citizenship. But with respect to children born in the United States (Section 1401(a)), it takes its lesson from the Fourteenth Amendment and Wong Kim Ark, which as we have seen above defined a “citizen of the United States” at birth, and not from Minor, which we saw above confirmed the only definition of a “natural born Citizen” which it said existed under common law with which the Framers were familiar. Additionally, as to any other form of birthright citizenship, i.e., for those children born out of the United States, at best this statute defines and calls those persons “citizens of the United States,” not “natural born Citizens.”

The constitutional lesson that we learn from Minor and Wong Kim Ark is that in order for one to be a “natural born Citizen,” one must satisfy the common law definition of a “natural-born citizen,” i.e., a child born in a country to parents who were its “citizens” at the moment of the child’s birth. If one can only satisfy the Fourteenth Amendment’s or 8 U.S.C. Section 1401(a)’s definition of birthright citizenship, i.e., born in the United States and “subject to the jurisdiction thereof,” one can be a “citizen of the United States” at birth, but not an Article II “natural born Citizen.”

MichaelIsGreat said...

Hello Mr. Apuzzo,

If Obama is considered a "natural born citizen" even after the many suits that have been made against him, a few going as far as the Supreme Court of the USA (even though he is not a natural born citizen according to the Constitution of the USA!!),
then Senator Cruz and many others could be assumed to be "natural born citizens" until a court would decide otherwise!!!

By the way, have you given up on Obama concerning his ineligibility to be PoTUSA because he is not a natural born citizen?

More, it is now a fact that Obama has been using a fraudulent social security number, and other fraudulent documents (fraudulent long and short form birth certificates, fraudulent service card, etc.), why are there not other attorneys working on fighting these basic and true facts in court (to my knowledge, only Attorney Orly Taitz uses these true facts)?

One thing is sure, the American judicial system is dead, completely unfair and it does NOT provide the minimum of Justice that any citizen should expect from the American judicial system!!! In particular, the Supreme Court of the USA is basically a parody, a mockery of justice!!!
Proof? The Obama saga I could call it with the many suits against Obama that have never ever been assessed, judged on the merits of the facts presented!!!
What do YOU plan to do to fight this evil and this extremely worrying state of affairs?
The recent case of Orly Taitz who had a case that was supposed to be seen by the Supreme Court of the USA. What happened? The case was rejected, not because the Supreme Court judges assessed it fully by assessing the documents presented but because of the corrupt way the Supreme Court of the USA functions. What apparently happened is the following. The Supreme court judges NEVER saw this case nor the documents related to this case and it happens for many cases reaching the Supreme Court of the USA. There are helpers to the Supreme Court judges who do all the work and they are the ones who decide which case will be presented to the Supreme court judges of the USA and which ones will be discarded and basically the Supreme court judges might not even be aware that an important case has been discarded by these helpers!!
Therefore, any case against Obama reaching the Supreme court of the USA can easily be discarded by these helpers who could be given the order to do so by any person in power that supports Obama!!
What do YOU plan to do to fight this evil and highly dishonest system that is currently in use at the Supreme Court of the USA?

As you can see, there are many possible fights that people who yearn for a fair and just judicial system must take, must tackle!!!

With the parody of Justice that has been very obvious and evident concerning the legal cases against Obama, there must be a tsunami of actions to reform this corrupt, unfair and nothing short of EVIL judicial system that permeates every court in the USA, especially when it pertains to the crook in Chief, Barack Hussein Obama.

Mario Apuzzo, Esq. said...

MichaelIsGreat,

I of IV

You have asked me: “What do YOU plan to do to fight this evil and this extremely worrying state of affairs?” It appears that you are not aware of what I have done and what I am still doing.

(1) On January 20, 2009, after the joint Congress confirmed Obama’s Electoral College votes but before he was sworn into office that day, I filed the Kerchner v. Obama action in the Federal District Court in New Jersey. That lower court dismissed the case, finding that plaintiffs did not have standing and because it said that whether Obama was a “natural born Citizen” and eligible to be President was a political question which the courts could not answer. Neither that lower court nor Obama’s lawyers said that the case that I filed was frivolous. I appealed the case to the Third Circuit on the two issues of standing and political question. The Third Circuit affirmed the lower court on dismissing the case on the standing issue. It did not address the political question issue. The Third Circuit found that my appeal on standing was frivolous. That court made me show cause why I should not be made to pay Obama’s costs and expenses incurred by him in defending himself in the appeal. Needless to say that I was surprised that a court, presented with the Obama circumstances, that he has yet to conclusively prove that he is a “natural born Citizen” because he never provided any competent evidence to any controlling legal authority as to his place of birth and that he cannot prove that he is an Article II “natural born Citizen” because, as the facts which are not in dispute undoubtedly demonstrate, he was not born in the United States to parents who were its “citizens” at the moment of his birth, would want to make me pay defense damages for having made that argument when it claimed my clients did not have standing to make it, when the issue of standing is highly controversial and unpredictable in our justice system, Article II, Section 1, Clause 5 presidential eligibility suits and their standing were historically unprecedented, when there existed no U.S. Supreme Court opinion on Article II, Section 1, Clause 5 standing, and when my clients were in need of the U.S. Supreme Court to render an opinion on both the standing issue and the underlying merits of the question of what is an Article II “natural born Citizen” and whether Obama meets that definition. I filed with the Third Circuit a 95-page response to its order and the court immediately discharged its order and freed me from having to pay any defense damages. I filed a petition for certification to the U.S. Supreme Court on the issue of standing and on the underlying merits of the case. Without comment, the high court did not grant it.

Continued . . .

Mario Apuzzo, Esq. said...

II of IV

(2) I also assisted Charles Tisdale in Virginia who on January 23, 2012 had filed in the United States District Court for the District of Virginia a pro se complaint against Obama and others, contending that Obama was not a “natural born Citizen.” The same day that he filed it, January 23, 2012, and before Obama even filed an answer or any motion and without giving Mr. Tisdale an opportunity to respond, Federal District Court Judge Charles A. Gibney, Jr., reached the merits of the question of what is a “natural born Citizen” and whether Obama met the definition, and dismissed the complaint with prejudice. In his written Order, Judge Gibney, relying on Wong Kim Ark, ruled that “[i]t is well settled that those born in the United States are considered natural born citizens.” He also cited to Perkins v. Elg, 99 F.2d 408, 409 (1938) and Hollander v. McCain, 566 F.Supp.2d 63, 66 (D.N.H. 2008). I have written on the Fourteenth Amendment and the Wong Kim Ark case at length here, showing that they did not change the American national common law definition of a “natural-born citizen” as confirmed by the unanimous U.S. Supreme Court in Minor v. Happersett (1875). In the Elg case, the child was born in the United States to “citizen” parents and found to be a “natural born Citizen,” which is the exact definition for which Mr. Tisdale argued in his suit. In Hollander v. McCain (New Hampshire 2008), the court dismissed the complaint for standing. After ruling that it had no jurisdiction, it also ruled: "Those born ‘in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof,’ U.S. Const., amend. XIV, have been considered American citizens under American law in effect since the time of the founding, United States v. Wong Kim Ark, 169 U.S. 649, 674-75 (1898), and thus eligible for the presidency.” We can see that Hollander, while having no jurisdiction, also relied upon the Fourteenth Amendment and Wong Kim Ark. While it cited to the Fourteenth Amendment and Wong Kim Ark for the proposition that those born in the United States and “subject to the jurisdiction thereof” have been “considered American citizens under American law in effect since the time of the founding, it, and therefore also Judge Gibney, provided no authority or source for its conclusion “and thus eligible for the presidency.” Again, neither the Fourteenth Amendment nor Wong Kim Ark define a “natural born Citizen” any differently than how one was defined as Minor explained at common law with which the Framers were familiar. The Fourth Circuit affirmed in an unpublished and unprecedential opinion. Mr. Tisdale did not seek U.S. Supreme Court review.

Continued . . .

Mario Apuzzo, Esq. said...

III of IV

(3) I also assisted Commander Charles F. Kerchner, Jr. and Dale A. Laudenslager, and their attorney, Karen L. Kiefer, in their 2012 Obama ballot challenge in Pennsylvania, filed on February 17, 2012 in the Commonwealth Court of Pennsylvania. I wrote the brief in the case which Ms. Kiefer filed with the court. Ms. Kiefer filed a motion to have me admitted pro hac vice so that the plaintiffs could receive the benefit of the services of an attorney who had experience and knowledge on Article II, Section 1, Clause 5 and on Obama’s circumstances. Obama’s lawyer filed an objection to my entering into the case, arguing that the Third Circuit in Kerchner v. Obama had wanted to “sanction” me. On March 1, 2002, Senior Judge, Keith B. Quigley, without stating absolutely any reason for its decision, denied Ms. Kiefer’s motion and thereby refused to allow me to assist the plaintiffs and Ms. Kiefer. Ms. Kiefer and her clients were left to handle the case alone. That court eventually ruled that it had no jurisdiction to determine the qualifications of a presidential candidate. It added that it would have such jurisdiction if a candidate files with the state an affidavit stating that he or she is eligible for the office sought. But since Obama was not required to file any affidavit stating that he was eligible for the Office of President and did not file any such affidavit, the court had no jurisdiction. Hence, the court never reached the merits of the question of what is the correct definition of a “natural born Citizen” and whether Obama meets it. The plaintiffs did not file any appeal.

(4) I also represented Nicholas Purpura and Theodore Moran in the Purpura and Moran v. Obama ballot challenge in New Jersey which I filed on April 5, 2012. In that case, Obama’s lawyer conceded and Administrative Law Judge Jeff S. Masin confirmed during the hearing in Trenton that there was no evidence presented by anyone to the State of New Jersey or to the court which demonstrated who Obama was or where he was born. Both Obama’s lawyer and the court accepted that the 2011 on-line alleged Obama long-form birth certificate image was not evidence to be considered by the court. Judge Masin ruled that no evidence of a presidential candidate’s identity or birth place was necessary in New Jersey because even Mickey Mouse could run for President. Still Judge Masin ruled:

“Thus, accepting for the point of this issue that Mr. Obama was born in Hawaii, he is a ‘natural born Citizen’ regardless of the status of his father.” Initial Decision, p. 7.

ALJ Masin "accepted" that Obama was born in Hawaii to rule that he is a "natural born Citizen." But at the same time, Obama's lawyer conceded and Judge Masin confirmed that there was no evidence presented to the State of New Jersey, let alone to the court, that proved who he was or where he was born. So, ALJ Masin ruled that Obama was born in Hawaii, but without any such evidence admitted into the court record, and that by that fact alone (birth in the United States), which was not proven through any competent evidence in the record, he was an Article II “natural born Citizen.” Judge Masin’s sole authority for his definition of a “natural born Citizen” was again, Wong Kim Ark. New Jersey Secretary of States, Kim Guadagno, adopted ALJ’s entire opinion. On appeal, the New Jersey Appellate Division affirmed without its own opinion. The New Jersey Supreme Court refused to grant certification.

Continued . . .

Mario Apuzzo, Esq. said...

IV of IV

(5) I am currently assisting the pro se H. Brooke Paige in his Obama eligibility challenge in Vermont which was filed in the Vermont Superior Court Washington Unit on August 27, 2012. There was also an attempt in Vermont to prevent me from assisting Mr. Paige. The attempt failed. I have prepared at his request his briefs in the lower court and in the Supreme Court. The lower court, as other courts that have reached the merits have done, placed its complete reliance upon Wong Kim Ark. The case is currently pending in the Vermont Supreme Court, with oral arguments scheduled for Tuesday, April 23, 2013, at 9:30 a.m. Mr. Paige will be conducting the oral argument in his pro se capacity.

I trust that this information will give you further insight into my litigation efforts on the Obama eligibility issue and how some of our courts have responded to that effort.

Carlyle said...

Mario -

I AGREE with you. I believe the detailed correct reading/interpretation is critical to the concept and definition of America, and to the rule of law.

It also has extreme implications for national security.

I simply asserted that the people currently in power seem to believe that many things, including the definition of NBC, are technicalities - and one best left alone, at that.

I also assert that while the Supreme Court has used technicalities in the past to defend their reasoning, they do it inconsistently and only as fits their desire for this or that outcome. Inconvenient technicalities are ignored or interpreted away all the time.

Recent interactions with Alan West and past interactions with Ron Paul are illustrative. Both are very vocal about being constitutionalists, etc. But both steadfastly refuse to even hear anything against Dear Obama for purely practical reasons - they don't want to be on the wrong side of a losing argument. All the powerful people range on a spectrum from "ho hum, who cares" to "scared spitless". NONE are on our side.

This is worrisome.

Unknown said...

No court will ever say obama is not a NBC. He is probably not even a citizen, this is all one big charade. These judges should be ashamed of themselves for citing wka as a nbc. The Founders must be looking down in disgust at these spineless jellyfish

Teo Bear said...

“NONE are on our side,” Carlyle says.

He gives a long list of luminaries who have run from the side they say they protect, seeking the comfort of a public opinion that is nothing more than a manufactured. Perhaps my friend would like to remember these men are not new; What has been will be again,
 what has been done will be done again;
 there is nothing new under the sun.

“THESE are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: it is dearness only that gives every thing its value. Heaven knows how to put a proper price upon its goods; and it would be strange indeed if so celestial an article as FREEDOM should not be highly rated.”

My friend observes that the position those sunshine patriots take “also has extreme implications for national security,” ends his dark observations with the words, “This is worrisome.”

No my friend that is not worrisome, that was expected. What would be very worrisome is when you, Robert, Michael, William, JayJay, Charlie, and others who declare in firm voices Truth stands alone and does not depend on opinion to shore up its character, become quite. When good men permit the multitudes to bully them into silence that is worrisome.

Yes these people Carlyle reports have saddened us all, “They tell us, sir, that we are weak; unable to cope with so formidable an adversary.”

“I have but one lamp by which my feet are guided, and that is the lamp of experience. I know of no way of judging of the future but by the past.” Tyrants never return the liberties they take. The grave does not give up the dead the despot sends its way. No man has ever been defeated, who has not first surrendered.

I say to the Allen West’s, the Mark Levin’s, the Ron Paul’s and countless others who say we should stop questioning a thing so obvious, “We are apt to shut our eyes against a painful truth, and listen to the song of that siren till she transforms us into beasts. Is this the part of wise men, engaged in a great and arduous struggle for liberty? Are we disposed to be of the number of those who, having eyes, see not, and, having ears, hear not, the things which so nearly concern their temporal salvation? For my part, whatever anguish of spirit it may cost, I am willing to know the whole truth; to know the worst, and to provide for it.”

My friend, “Should I keep back my opinions at such a time, through fear of giving offense, I should consider myself as guilty of treason towards my country, and of an act of disloyalty toward the Majesty of Heaven, which I revere above all earthly kings?”

“What would they have? Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!”

Who do we have on our side my friend? I have called two witnesses to remind you my friend of the importance of what we do today, Patrick Henry, March 23, 1775 and Thomas Paine, December 23, 1776 and “if we mean not basely to abandon the noble struggle in which we have been so long engaged, and which we have pledged ourselves never to abandon until the glorious object of our contest shall be obtained--we must fight! I repeat it, sir, we must fight! An appeal to arms and to the God of hosts is all that is left us!”

Carlyle said...

Thank you Teo Bear for your insightful and righteous comments. I cannot of course disagree with any of it - as far as it goes.

But to me it seems only like "right thinking" and "theory" frankly. I believe this blog, and certainly for myself - the focus is on practical solutions.

A number of things have been tried. It is unclear what a few right thinking people can do "outside the system" and without a "bully pulpit". Not that we should quit trying.

I am only commenting that we seem to have exhausted all available practical remedies. I would be thrilled and excited to be proven wrong. Bring it on.

As another very practical example:

I suspect that The Obama is quite well insulated from everything - probably at least one arm's length of "plausible deniability" away from the darkest parts. Then as far as the other perpetrators of this fraud, could not The Obama just pardon everybody?

Mario Apuzzo, Esq. said...

The critical error that the Obama/Cruz/Rubio/Haley eligibility supporters commit is one of conflating and confounding. Their fatal error is that they fail to account for the critical constitutional distinction between a Fourteenth Amendment or statutory “citizen of the United States,” at birth, and an Article II “natural born Citizen of the United States.” A “citizen of the United States,” at birth, not to be conflated and confounded with a “natural born Citizen of the United States,” is defined under the Fourteenth Amendment (with the English common law serving as an aid in construing and applying “subject to the jurisdiction thereof” per U.S. v. Wong Kim Ark (1898)) or Acts of Congress. But a “natural born Citizen of the United States” may be defined only under American national common law (per both Minor v. Happersett (1875) and Wong Kim Ark) the nomenclature and meaning of which the Framers knew and applied when they drafted the Constitution.

Barack Obama (by the Fourteenth Amendment if born in the United States), Ted Cruz (by an Act of Congress), Marco Rubio (by the Fourteenth Amendment), and Nikki Haley (by the Fourteenth Amendment) are all “citizens of the United States” at birth. But they are not “natural born Citizens of the United States.”

MichaelN said...

Prepare and send a "memo" to each and every member of the US Congress and Senate, which exposes and cpounters the Maskell memo.

AS long as the members of the legislature have the Maskell memo to rely on, they will do nothing on the matter of "natural born Citizen",and the courts will duck the issue and send it to the Congress, and so the merry-go-round will keep turning.

In the mean time, traitors and dictators run the country.

Send a memo.

jayjay said...

Mario:

Many of us wish you the best of fortune in your upcoming efforts vis-à-vis the VT Sooper Court.

A lot of the commenters supporting their law-breaking hero do not seem to grasp that it is not the plaintiffs who need to prove Obama is (or is not) a nbc but it is the guy himself as soon as a court of sufficient merit looks at the evidence and concludes that the guy has never shown via concrete evidence, under adversarial examination, that he IS a nbc. Nothing has ever concretely shown him to be so despite his fanboys such as Fogbreath, Doktur C, etc.

jayjay said...

MichaelN:

Memps to all CongressCats of that sort about Maskell and the CRS yield absolutely zero results.

On two different occasions I have written to all 535 of the yeomen/yeowomen(?) on that exact matter plus pointing them to the felony reports to the FBI both in DC and Hawaii.

Guess what??? Zip, zero, nada - not even the very common "thank you for your letter; we love hearing from voters" (possibly so we can ignore them).

Unknown said...

obots say a citizen at birth is of course a NBC but according to fudged BC obama was a citizen at birth of US and the UKC so he is obviously a NBC of 2 countrys. After studying JFK murder, real reason for water gate coverup (jfk) 911 anomalys and now this it is clear to me that their have been some very powerful people in fed govt who are highly corrupt and treasonous. I have some hope Judge roy moore in alabama will be a patriot

Carlyle said...

Mario -

I have questioned the NBC issue repeatedly - even while believing you are fundamentally correct - because I believe 'everybody' (most especially the MSM) will ridicule it as a technicality, a nit.

A appreciate your recent increased enthusiasm for looking at Republican candidates as well. I believe the major hope we have to get people's attention and to raise NBC above a perceived technicality is to be wide and fair in it's application.

If we were to succeed in drawing significant attention to Rubio or Cruz, then perhaps the MSM would have to seriously cover the idea - and that would then have repercussions for THE 1.

Mario Apuzzo, Esq. said...

dh,

Jack Maskell and the Obots, with their any citizen "at birth" or "from birth" is a "natural born Citizen" thesis, commit the fallacy of affirming the consequent. They also put forth a thesis which does not square with the national security purposes of the "natural born Citizen" clause.

I will be publishing an essay very soon on this.

Carlyle said...

Dick Head -

Not only that, but a major influence is obviously being felt from abroad. i.e. a Foreign Agent. As we know, Obama is quite possibly a Foreign Agent himself, but perhaps more importantly the stronger influence, the more critical Foreign Agent is Obama's puppeteer.

It is painfully clear that Obama received SIGNIFICANT help along the way. It is equally clear that he continues to receive guidance and direction from SOMEONE.

However, I have yet to see credible postulates as to who that person or agency actually is. I maintain that it is absolutely essential to National Security that this be known.

(One good place to start, however, is with Valerie Jarrett! Who is this person anyway? Why is a common slum lord, with no other credentials, deeply embedded in the Obama entourage?)

I see no action or no concern on the part of our elected representatives. Sidestepping (or even running scared from) the Race Issue is one thing. But looking the other way over the most clear and present danger our country has ever encountered is beyond belief.

Hisself could not even pass a basic security clearance required of civilians working on government contracts. How can he possibly be a 'safe' president?

Color me confused and boggled.

PS - not to mention opportunities for blackmail!

Unknown said...

carlyle, chicago slumlord val jarrett is the daughter in law of commie vernon jarrett who was friends with commie frank marshall davis who i and many others suspect is the real father. They look and talk a lot alike, obama had nothing to do with barry not that anyone could blame him. Tim Geitheners father and stanley ann dunham also knew each other from a indonesian bank connection. The defacto president from all i hear is val jarrett, barry is just a stooge who reads from teleprompter. If our Founders were alive today i think they would agree with me that we currently have criminals and enemys of the United States usurping the exec branch of fed govt and a spineless, complicit congress and court system that allows it. All it would take to remove these frauds is the enforcement of article 2. The NBC clause is a very simple law.

Unknown said...

I also think the saudis helped put him in power too along with the bushes. I can put up with some skimmage and lying from politicians but this crew we have in white house now are trying to ruin our country and currency. I never thought i would see the day when people like this would be in power, how naive of me

Doublee said...

Mr. Apuzzo:
Assume for the moment that the birth certificate that Obama posted on the White House web site is a fraud. Mike Zullo of Sheriff Arpaio’s Cold Case Posse is convinced that the evidence is solid that the birth certificate is a fraud.

I suspect that this would be unchartered territory as far a criminal law and the president as a perpetrator are concerned.

Would you give us your thoughts on whether the president can be prosecuted for a crime that he either committed or aided and abetted while in office – a crime that goes to the very core of who he claims to be?

Unknown said...

Anyone who has studied his fake BC image, fake draft card, fake social and article 2 ineligibility knows he is a fraud and knows nothing will be done about it. He is above regular laws and the supreme law of United States, Article 2 of US Constitution. The courts will do whatever the politicians ask them to in regards to obama. Masin is either the most incompetent judge in US or one of most corrupt. For these state judges to say obama is eligible because of WKA is blatantly dishonest.

Unknown said...

Something interesting from a recent article: “Interpretation 324.2 Reacquisition of citizenship lost by marriage.”

Interpretation 324.2(a)(7):

“(7) Restoration of citizenship is prospective . Restoration to citizenship under any one of the three statutes is not regarded as having erased the period of alienage that immediately preceded it.

The words “shall be deemed to be a citizen of the United States to the same extent as though her marriage to said alien had taken place on or after September 22, 1922″, as they appeared in the 1936 and 1940 statutes, are prospective and restore the status of native-born or natural-born citizen as of the date citizenship was reacquired.”

Interpretation 324.2:

“The effect of naturalization under the above statutes was not to erase the previous period of alienage, but to restore the person to the status IF NATURALIZED, NATIVE, OR NATURAL-BORN CITIZEN, as determined by her status prior to loss.” [...] http://www.uscis.gov/ilink/docView/SLB/HTML/SLB/0-0-0-1/0-0-0-45077/0-0-0-48575.html
[http://obamareleaseyourrecords.blogspot.com/2013/04/ins-proves-obama-not-eligible.html]

Whether our host would entirely agree with the restoration of "natural born citizen" status I do not know. The Immigration and Naturalization Service clealy had their attorneys.

So at least at the time of the above it was recognized that native born and natural born were two different categories and not one. I am not clear about the date of this statute or whether it is still in effect.

So, prior to the 14th Amendment there were just two basic categories of citizens: natural born and naturalized. The afore mentioned Amendment then created a third category--native born.

If Obama were indeed born in Hawaii, then he would be a native born citizen. Otherwise, he would be an alien.

Now with respect to a different aspect there are also three types of citizens: the vigilant and well-informed; the cheaters and spoil sports who know what the case is and have decided to "amend" the Constitution in a new way; and the uninformed and non-vigilant. The last type is easily in the majority. The second type is fairly small but very powerful. And the first type is small and without much power at this time. The second type like democracy because they can then manipulate the masses--which is why I prefer electorates and am not happy with the Senators being elected by popular vote. The mass are easily hypnotized by the media and the cheaters into their own losses.

Mario Apuzzo, Esq. said...

William St. George,

You said: “So, prior to the 14th Amendment there were just two basic categories of citizens: natural born and naturalized. The aforementioned Amendment then created a third category--native born.” I do not agree with this nomenclature.

The Constitution speaks only of “natural born Citizens” and “Citizens of the United States.” While the Constitution gives Congress the power to make uniform the rules of naturalization, there is no mention of a “naturalized citizen” as a class of citizen. In fact, our Constitution, including the Fourteenth Amendment, and Acts of Congress have only ever spoken about either “natural born Citizens” or “citizens of the United States.”

Minor v. Happesett said:

“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. . . .”

So, at common law, at the moment of birth, there were the “natural-born citizens” and the "aliens or foreigners." This did not preclude Congress by positive legislation and the Fourteenth Amendment from making more “citizens” who were also citizens “at birth” or “from birth,” but not “natural born Citizens.” This class of “citizens” is, by the requirements of the Constitution, unless amended, and by the very positive law which creates them, called “citizens of the United States” and not “natural born Citizens.”

So, when we speak of “citizens” under the Constitution, there are only “natural born Citizens” and “citizens of the United States,” either at birth or after birth. The “natural born Citizens” are those children born in the country to parents who were its “citizens” at the moment of the children's birth. All other U.S. “citizens” are “citizens of the United States,” either at birth or after birth.

Teo Bear said...

Mario,

I agree with William in concept, but to his defense I also make offense in not paying particular attention to the words I choose. Perhaps it is because I and many others on this blog have become so intimate with the concept of a natural born citizen we forget words do matter (especially to a lawyer ;->)

Whereas William said that prior to the 14th amendment there were two basic categories of citizenship, Justice Waite explained in Minor that, "additions might always be made to the citizenship of the United States in two ways: first, by birth, and second, by naturalization. "

Whereas William says categories, my discussion with you have lead me to a better word, "avenues," of citizenship. Prior to the 14th Amendment these two avenues to citizenship, were the natural born and naturalized.

Yet, still avenues is not the best word. It is not the best word since there are two classifications of citizenship within the United States. One classification is the citizen of the United States, who prior to the 14th amendment had to proactively seek it through naturalization, and other is the natural born citizen whose citizenship
was inherently bestowed upon them at birth.

The 14th amendment created a third avenue, that was a fork in the avenue of birth, but it did not create a third classification. Rather this fork changed of destination from the logical and customary direction of a natural born citizen to that of a citizen of the United States.

It is in this avenue most people get lost, they get lost in understanding it or explaining it. We the member of your blog fall into the later group. While we understand the concept of the 14th amendment making a person born under its protection a citizen of the United States, we lack the vocabulary to clearly explain it.

Compounding the issue are the positive laws of Title 8, section 1401, which grants the appellation of citizen of the United States at birth to those whose circumstances of birth are enumerated under this section.

What is never mentioned in Title 8 are the words natural born citizen, nor is the description of a natural born citizen used in every SCOTUS case that referenced this nomenclature, that being of a person born of citizen parents under the jurisdiction.

Since the founding fathers refused to grant both congress and the people the direct power to select a President, it is logical that they would also withhold from them the power to "define" the terms of eligibility, i.e what defines a natural born citizen.

Again we your readers understand that Title 8 does not make a person a natural born citizen, but as Carlyle alluded to we lack a "bullet-proof" argument that can clearly and effortlessly refute those who confuse the laws enacted after the ratification of the Constitution. For me at the the time of ratification of Constitution the framers understanding of the term natural born citizen became the ipso facto definition, and only a constitutional amendment can change it.

What I would suggest that instead of debating nuances of law among ourselves, we unite of collective expertise to define a one page statement of indisputable fact showing that our definition of a natural born citizen is the one closest to the framers definition.




Unknown said...

I find it handy to differentiate between native born and naturalized. The difference is meaningful, and I have known people who speak of themselves as naturalized citizens. I even believe you will find this in gov. documents and so forth. Does it have any legal value? We would need to ask our host. But for demographic purposes I believe it does; and sociologist make use of it when they speak of first and second generation persons. Etc. My comment was not intended to be particularly Constitutional--but the 14th Amendment did in fact create a new class of citizens. So I guess you simply have a verbal issue here. [I believe there was a period of several decades before the Civil War when persons born to citizen parents overseas were not considered citizens until naturalization.]

Mario Apuzzo, Esq. said...

Teo Bear,

Here is a part of an essay that I will be publishing soon.

Again, the Constitution speaks only of “a natural born Citizen,” or a “citizen” of the United States. The common term in the two classes of members of the United States is “citizen.” The confusion comes in when we identify a law (The Fourteenth Amendment or Act of Congress) which textually defines a “citizen” of the United States. While a “natural born Citizen” of the United States is a subset of a “citizen” of the United States, a law that textually defines a “citizen” of the United States cannot and does not at the same time define a “natural born Citizen” of the United States, which is a subset of a “citizen” of the United States. We cannot just take that law which textually defines a “citizen” of the United States and assume that it also defines a “natural born Citizen” of the United States, just like we cannot take a document that defines an “automobile” of the Ford Motor Corporation and assume that it also defines a “ruby-red automobile” of the Ford Motor Corporation. First, calling an “automobile” a “ruby-red automobile” of the Ford Motor Corporation is not the same as calling an “automobile” simply an “automobile” of the Ford Motor Corporation. Second, the two classes of “automobiles” have their own separate and distinct definitions which when satisfied give us the “automobile” described. So, too, a “natural born Citizen” of the United States and a “citizen” of the United States have their own separate and distinct constitutional and statutory meanings which when satisfied give us the class of “citizen” in question. Thus, if any law is to define a “natural born Citizen” of the United States, it must name that class of “citizen” and define it. The clause cannot be defined by simply defining the class called “citizen” of the United States.

Unknown said...

Horace Gray who wrote the opinion in Wong Kim Ark was an appointee of President Chester A. Arthur, who interestingly was born to a father in Vermont who was not at the time a citizen of the USA. I believe it was Leo Donofrio who finally found the naturalization papers of Arthur's father. In any case Chester A. placed the time of naturalization before his birth whereas it was actually when he was a teenager. I believe he knew this and probably made various efforts to conceal the fact. Donofrio at least believed this to be the case. It also seems to me that Mr.Donofrio thought that Justice Gray may have known; and this may have had some perceptible effect on the way he composed the Wong Kim Ark opinion. Personally I am not in a position to judge something like this. That would make Obama the second instance of a de facto president. Interesting.

Unknown said...

I read the James Mcclure article by Publius and i did not know John Jay, Madison and Hamilton wrote under that name writing the federalist papers. Mcclure did not inherit citizenship from his parents and being born in US can make you at best a citizen of the US under 14th which was ratified in 1860s, 80 years after mcclures birth. GM sells million of cars a year but that does not make them all the same as mario notes

Unknown said...

The Matter of Citizenship---

Citizenship has been a very complicated affair in the USA. At one time a woman lost her US citizenship if she married an alien. However, after the husband's demise her citizenship could be restored--though this probably varied as Congress passed different regulations. However, her child no doubt remained a French citizen. or whatever depending on the father. So some very odd family circumstances occurred. Or might have. Here is a real life example.
My grandmother was born in 1894 in Nebraska. Her father was English. When or if he became a citizen I do not know. I never once heard my grandmother talk about citizenship. And yet she loved to tell stories. Strictly speaking she may have been an English citizen--but she voted in every election and her husband was an attorney. I do not think at least in some areas that people paid much attention to the subtleties of law. In Nebraska in those days people were not subservient to the Federal goverment or even the state government. So the laws regarding citizenship were probably more a theory than a practice for many Americans. How many persons do you suppose have a complete grasp of all the different rules over the years? A few, though very few, historians. Most people probably operated according to common sense. Of course in the above example my grandmother, after Wong Kim Ark, would also have been an American citizen but were people allowed dual citzenship in those days? While it is true the Constitution only mentions two types, the variety within those types is large. How many subtypes are there? For example, a woman who lost her citizenship due to marriage but was otherwise a natural born citizen is in a different category than an alien woman who is living in America. And the whole matter of dual citizenship has I think many complications. I don't believe a person can hold both Mexican and American citizenship but someone can have both Israeli and American citizenship--something I think is dangerous. In fact dual citizenship does not seem like a good idea. I believe a thick book could be produced on this subject of citizenship. It would be very handy indeed if written by a true scholar and not a political one.

Unknown said...

Doing some rereading I can see that we have the same problem here that philosophers have. Getting the right words. I am quite familiar with the distinction between natural born citizen and citizen made in the Constitution, and was so before I found this site several years ago. I used the word "category" to simply bring things down to everyday level. People standing in line to vote: a not very well informed person says to his friend, 'How can that guy from France be voting'. The friend explains that the French guy is now a naturalized citizen. Without using the adjective "naturalized" the ignorant man will not be any wiser. Mario is now using the term "subset" which is fine but like "category" it could on occasion confuse. And is "type" worse? I guess it should be up to the attorneys out of courtesy.
Perhaps the operational idea is the "how". At one time having citizen parents would not make one a citizen if the birth were overseas. McCain though born in Panama apparently not on a military base though was considered a natural born citizen. By natural law one took the citizenship of the father by American law--but not apparently always.

So using the how:--the set of all persons having both citizen parents at birth and born in the USA are natural born citizens. The set of all persons born in the USA both of whose parents are not citizens (with a few exceptions like children of Ambassadors) or having gone through a naturalization process are simply citzens. Each set may have subsets. I can not think of a subset for natural born citizen but perhap there is or was one. Clearly mathematics is easier to set up neatly.
Now maybe at one time women were a subset as were men. The Constitution does not specify man for President. What if a very masculine woman with the androgynous name Leslie Monroe had become president. A woman who regarded herself as a man and never thought otherwise. Would there be grounds for removing her from office if she was seen once skinny dipping? In other words was there any Constitutional barrier to a woman being the fifth president of the USA? I don't think so. But there is a sort of subset here. For a long time there has been an implicit additional requirement that the person be a man--but Hilary can run without an Amendment first. So not all natural born citizens over the age of 35, etc. were in fact qualified. Hence, a kind of cultural subset. Etc. Hope this is meaningful and in some sense of value.

MichaelN said...

hltaanerThe Article II term "natural born Citizen" was not intended as a means (avenue)to US citizenship.

It is a term descriptive of a US citizen who may be eligible for the office of POTUS.

The term is to describe a US citizen with the highest possible allegiance to the US and the least possible foreign ties.

In the Wong Kim Ark decision, the court cited favorably, without opposition or comment to both the Minor definition of a US natural born citizen and also to Horace Binney's recognition of two types of born citizens.

1. "the child of an alien, if born in the country"

2. "the natural born child of a citizen"

Clearly, in both the Minor court and the Wong Kim Ark court, the term "natural born" was tied to PARENTS and not place.

Even with reference to English law, the Wong decision showed how it was the local ligeance and obedience of the father which determined the allegiance of his native-born child.

Teo Bear said...

MichaelN,

As I said words are our own worst enemy in this battle.

I agree with your statement about a NBC possessing the highest form of allegiance to the United States.

So would you say that a NBC is a person born owing allegiance to the United States, and a "citizen of the United States" is one born owing allegiance to some other state, who may or may not have renounced said allegiance? Or would you say that all "citizens of the United States" owe allegiance to the United States, but natural born citizens owe allegiance exclusively to the United States since their birth? What I am trying to do is distill our debates, observations and even opinions into a irrefutable statement to become a definition which we all agree on and promote throughout our channels of dissemination.

William,

Interesting to note is that CA Arthur never provided documentation that proved he was born in the US. In fact his American mother's parents were ex-pats living in Dunham Quebec just 20 miles away from his british father's home in Fairfield VT. Wouldn't it make sense that Arthur's mother have the baby at the home of her parents instead of being alone in VT?

Interesting to note is that the city Arthur could have been born in, bears the same name as Obama's mother; Dunham ;->

Mario Apuzzo, Esq. said...

William St. George,

You said: “I find it handy to differentiate between native born and naturalized.” The problem that I find with these word choices is that the Obama eligibility supporters exploit their ambiguity in their attempt to convince the public that they are right.

At common law with which the Framers were familiar, a “native” had the same meaning as a “natural-born citizen.” But later in our history, “native born” was equated with “native” and, to be able to distinguish a “citizen” of the United States “at birth” or “from birth” from one after birth, it took on the meaning of being a “citizen” of the United States through birth in the United States. There are numerous statements in the historical records which say that the President must be native born. The eligibility supporters then take those statements and argue that since there is no mention of citizen parents, there is no such requirement for one to be a “natural born Citizen.” But their argument is fallacious because being “native born” is a necessary condition of being a “natural born Citizen,” not a sufficient one. So, they take a necessary condition and pass it off as being a sufficient condition to make one a “natural born Citizen.”

The word “naturalized” is also ambiguous. Normally, when we see the word “naturalized,” we think about a person becoming naturalized after birth. But there is also such a thing as “naturalized at birth.” In fact, Jill Pryor, in her “The Natural-Born Citizen Clause and Presidential Eligibility: An Approach for Resolving Two Hundred Years of Uncertainty,” 97 Yale L.J. 881-889 (1988), even advocates making a “naturalized born citizen” (a person born out of the United States to one or two U.S. “citizen” parents) a “natural born Citizen.” When the Obama eligibility supporters use the “natural born Citizen”/“naturalized citizen” dichotomy to attempt to show that any person who is a “citizen” of the United States “at birth” or “from birth” is a “natural born Citizen” because not “naturalized,” they avoid even mentioning that there is such a thing as “naturalized at birth.” And they do so intentionally so as to try to convince the public that their argument is invincible. But the truth of the matter is that they do not address that one can be “naturalized at birth” and how such a birth status upsets their “natural born Citizen” apple cart.

Mario Apuzzo, Esq. said...

William St. George,

I appreciate Attorney Leo Donofrio’s uncovering that Chester Arthur’s father, born in Ireland in 1818 or 1819, became a “citizen” of the United States after his birth through naturalization in 1843, when Chester Arthur, born on October 5, 1829, in Vermont (Attorney A.P. Hinman did an investigation which showed that he was actually born in Canada) was 14 years old. I also agree with Leo that, given that Chester Arthur was allegedly born in the United States to a non-U.S. “citizen” father (actually, with his U.S. “citizen” mother marrying an alien, both his parents were non-U.S. “citizens”), he was not a “natural born Citizen.” But I disagree with him on his reading of the Wong Kim Ark decision.

I believe that Justice Gray fudged various parts of his Wong Kim Ark opinion only to arrive at a predetermined conclusion. But from how Justice Gray wrote the opinion in Wong Kim Ark, I do not believe that he was covering for Chester Arthur. Justice Gray never questioned the correctness of Minor’s definition of a “natural-born citizen” or that such a definition should not have preclude Wong from being a “natural-born citizen.” That is because Justice Gray never needed to nor did he hold Wong to be a “natural born Citizen.” In fact, Justice Gray never addressed the purpose of Article II’s “natural born Citizen” clause.

Also, when Justice Gray analyzed the impact that what he called the Roman “international law” rule (jus sanguinis) had on U.S. citizenship, he looked only to the time that the Fourteenth Amendment was passed and not to the time the Framers wrote the Constitution and the “natural born Citizen” clause into the Constitution. He, unlike other U.S. Supreme Court decisions and Justices had done in the past when discussing U.S. citizenship (Minor actually paraphrased Emer de Vattel’s The Law of Nations Section 212 definition of a “natural-born citizen”), did not even mention Vattel or The Law of Nations. Hence, he surely could not have been analyzing the Founders’ and Framers’ meaning of a “natural born Citizen.” Justice Gray, therefore, only found Wong to be a “citizen” of the United States at birth under the Fourteenth Amendment, which as I have long ago said has nothing to do with defining an Article II “natural born Citizen.”

Also, Justice Gray would have known that only a “natural born Citizen” is eligible to be President. If he was legitimizing Chester Arthur, he would have held in no uncertain terms that Wong, born in the United States to domiciled and resident alien parents like Chester Arthur, was not only a “citizen” of the United States under the Fourteenth Amendment, but also an Article II “natural born Citizen” under the common law to which Minor had referred in 1875.

Chief Justice Fuller in his dissent in dicta stated that he did not believe it was fair that the Court’s decision should be used to make a child born in the United States to alien parents eligible to be President when children born out of the United States to U.S. “citizen” parents were not so eligible. Justice Gray did not even address Justice Fuller’s comment, for he knew that he did not hold that Wong was a “natural born Citizen.”

Mario Apuzzo, Esq. said...

William St. George,

From day one, I have maintained that all “natural born Citizens” are “citizens” of the United States, but not all “citizens” of the United States are “natural born Citizens.”

I have also always maintained that the Fourteenth Amendment or Congressional Acts that textually define a “citizen” of the United States do just that, and do not at the same time define a “natural born Citizen” as though that class of “citizen” were a subset of a “citizen” of the United States who that very law was defining.

Without this basic understanding, one cannot arrive at the correct meaning of an Article II “natural born Citizen,” the Fourteenth Amendment, Acts of Congress, Minor v. Happersett, and U.S. v. Wong Kim Ark.

Mario Apuzzo, Esq. said...

Dr. Conspiracy writes on his blog:

“President Obama’s birth in Honolulu was in all the papers, and given that thousands of children were born in Honolulu that year, one more is not an extraordinary event. Nevertheless, birthers are getting better at propaganda than they used to be and in some of their rhetoric, they try to make it sound as if folks like me who believe the President was born in Hawaii do so out of faith rather than from evidence.

That is, of course, not how it is at all. Before the President released his long-form birth certificate 2 years ago this month (it seems longer), I wrote an article titled, “I believe Barack Obama was born at Kapi’olani Medical Center.” That was not a belief based on faith, but upon evidence. Since then, of course, the President released his birth certificate proving that belief to be true, and the State of Hawaii has separately verified it three times to other state officials and to a court.
Meanwhile, birthers have their own beliefs that, for example, the Obama birth certificate is a forgery. That is assuredly a faith-based belief because the expert testimony has never appeared. . . .

To say that the President of the United States, and the state officials from two administrations, lied about the facts of his birth is an extraordinary claim, and I will not accept it without proof, and there is none.”

We can see that Dr. Conspiracy’s claims are outlandish when we consider some facts. I represented Nicholas Purpura and Theodore Moran in the Purpura and Moran v. Obama ballot challenge in New Jersey which I filed on April 5, 2012. During the hearing in Trenton, I called to the stand an expert who was going to testify that the Obama’s April 2011 long-form birth certificate internet image had been manipulated and was therefore not representative of an authentic birth certificate. Both Obama’s lawyer and ALJ Judge Jeff S. Masin took steps to avoid having such testimony in the court record. In lieu of the expert testimony, Obama’s lawyer conceded and ALJ Masin confirmed that there was no evidence presented by anyone to New Jersey or to the court which demonstrated who Obama was or where he was born. Both Obama’s lawyer and ALJ Masin accepted that the 2011 on-line alleged Obama long-form birth certificate image was not evidence before the court. Judge Masin ruled that no evidence of a presidential candidate’s identity or birth place was necessary in N.J. because even Mickey Mouse could run for President. Still Judge Masin ruled:

“Thus, accepting for the point of this issue that Mr. Obama was born in Hawaii, he is a ‘natural born Citizen’ regardless of the status of his father.” Initial Decision, p. 7.

ALJ Masin "accepted" that Obama was born in Hawaii to rule that he is a "natural born Citizen." But at the same time, Obama's lawyer conceded and Judge Masin confirmed that there was no evidence presented to NJ, let alone to the court that proved who he was or where he was born. So, ALJ Masin ruled that Obama was born in Hawaii, but without any such evidence admitted into the court record, and that by that fact alone (birth in the United States), which was not proven through any competent evidence in the record, he was an Article II “natural born Citizen.” Judge Masin’s sole authority for his definition of a “natural born Citizen” was again, Wong Kim Ark. SOS Kim Guadagno, adopted the ALJ’s entire opinion, the N.J. Appellate Division affirmed without its own opinion, and the N.J. Supreme Court refused to grant certification.

So, there was not even a scintilla of evidence before the court as to who Obama is or where he was born, but the court “accepted” that he was born in Hawaii. Also, despite the hundreds of law suits filed against Obama, he has yet to provide to one court a certified true copy of his alleged long-form birth certificate. So, with these events, is it wrong to say that “folks like [Dr. Conspiracy & Co.] who believe the President was born in Hawaii do so out of faith rather than from evidence?

MichaelN said...

@ Teo Bear, who said ....

"I agree with your statement about a NBC possessing the highest form of allegiance to the United States.

So would you say that a NBC is a person born owing allegiance to the United States, ....."


An NBC is one owing allegiance ONLY to US, whereas if one quality of the TWO qualities required was absent, then the highest allegiance would not exist.

Teo Bear said.... "and a "citizen of the United States" is one born owing allegiance to some other state, who may or may not have renounced said allegiance?"

A "citizen of the United States" of the born variety, would encompass TWO types of born US citizens as Horace Binney recognized. i.e.

1. "the child of an alien, if born in the country"

2. "the natural born child of a citizen"

These are the words of Horace Binney that were cited favorably without opposition, in the Wong Kim Ark decision, which shows that the Wong court accepted the notion of two types of born citizens and that the term "natural born" was tied to US citizen parents and NOT to place of birth.

Furthermore the Wong decision cited to the Minor decision, which held that the US Constitution (which at the time included the 14th Amendment) did not say who shall be a "natural born citizen".

Ergo: Those "persons" mentioned in the 14th Amendment, who were born in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction, were not said to be "natural born citizen"s.

The "child of an alien" MUST be born "in the country" to be a "citizen of the US" and this child would have dubious loyalty and allegiance in contrast to the native-born, "natural born child of a citizen" with the highest possible allegiance to he US and who would have no discernible foreign ties.

The "natural born child of a citizen", (assuming Binney means one who is also "if born in the country")also becomes a "citizen of the US" just lie the "child of an alien, if born in the country" "by operation of the same principle", i.e. by being native-born.

All persons born native to US are "citizens of the United States", but only those native-born and, to US citizens, are "the natural born child of a citizen".

Teo Bear said...

Or would you say that all "citizens of the United States" owe allegiance to the United States, but natural born citizens owe allegiance exclusively to the United States since their birth?

Yes, but the native-born (who automatically have some allegiance via native-birth), who are also "natural born" are of the highest allegiance, not "since their birth", but rather because of their parents' allegiance.

Article II "natural born Citizen" is not eligibility for "citizen"; that comes from being native-born.

An Article II "natural born Citizen" describes a person who is already a "citizen of the United States", (which is already achieved by native-birth), i.e. one who must have the highest possible allegiance with the least possible foreign ties.

A native-born with citizen parents has a higher allegiance or the least possible foreign ties than a native-born with alien parents.

Mario Apuzzo, Esq. said...

Someone sent me an email asking: “If Mr Cruz of Texas is not qualified to be President what of Mr Marco Rubio of Florida?”

The answer is that Senator Marco Rubio is also not qualified.

The Constitution at Article II, Section 1, Clause 5 requires that future Presidents be “natural born Citizens” of the United States, not just “Citizens of the United States.” We have seen that under American national common law, a “natural born Citizen” of the United States is a child born in the United States to parents who were its “citizens” at the moment of the child’s birth. Marco Rubio, being a “citizen” of the United States at birth is qualified to be Senator, but not being an Article II “natural born Citizen” of the United States he is not qualified to be President and Commander in Chief of the Military. Marco Rubio cannot be a “natural born Citizen” because he acquired conflicting allegiances and citizenships from the moment of birth as follows:

Jus sanguinis: he was born to a Cuban father and Cuban mother. He was therefore born a citizen of and in allegiance to Cuba.

Jus soli: he was born in the United States. He was therefore born a citizen of and in allegiance to the United States.

So, two different nations, The United States and Cuba, can lay claim to Marco Rubio’s citizenship and allegiance. This means that he was not born within the full and complete political, military, and legal allegiance to the United States and therefore does not satisfy the national security purpose of the “natural born Citizen” clause which is unique to the singular and all-powerful constitutional Office of President and Commander in Chief of the Military. With such birth circumstances, he is a “citizen” of the United States under the Fourteenth Amendment and 8 U.S.C. Sec. 1401(a), but he is not and cannot be an Article II “natural born Citizen” under American national common law. Since Marco Rubio was born after the adoption of the Constitution and he is neither “a natural born Citizen, [n]or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution,” he is not eligible to be President and Commander in Chief of the Military.

Mario Apuzzo, Esq. said...

Here is an example of Obot fallacious arguments on the meaning of a “natural born Citizen:”

1. Native-born is a subset of natural-born. Obama is natural-born because he was born a US citizen and also native-born because he was born in the USA.

2. McCain was born in Panama and therefore is only natural-born not native-born. Similarly Canadian-born Ted Cruz is just a natural-born not native-born citizen.

3. All native born citizens are natural born citizens. Not all natural born citizens are native born citizens.

In these three statements, the commenter has taken “birth in the country” and “born citizen” (not to be conflated and confounded with “natural born citizen”), which are necessary conditions to be a “natural born Citizen,” and made either one a sufficient condition for obtaining that birth status.

In essence, the Obot logic is that if one is a “born citizen,” whether by birth in the U.S. (native born) or birth abroad to one or two U.S. “citizen” parents, one is a “natural born citizen.”

The fallacy of these arguments can be seen when we consider that the one and only American national common law definition of a “natural born Citizen” is a child born in a country to parents who were its “citizens” at the moment of the child’s birth. Hence, (1) birth in the country, and (2) to “citizen” parents are both necessary and sufficient conditions for one to be born with the birth status of “natural born Citizen.” To argue that birth in the country (native born) or birth to citizen parents is sufficient to make one a “natural born Citizen” is contrary to the constitutional definition of a “natural born Citizen” which is the supreme law of the land. Rather, the definition requires that both of those conditions be present, not just one or the other, to be a “natural born Citizen.”

The Obot thesis is also wrong from a policy and national security standpoint which is unique to the Office of President and Commander in Chief of the Military. The Obot thesis does not cut off the acquisition of foreign allegiances and citizenships acquired at birth through either jus sanguinis (allegiance and citizenship inherited at birth from one parent or both) or jus soli (allegiance and citizenship acquired at birth from one’s place of birth). Hence, it produces dual and conflicting birth allegiances and citizenships. Given the untoward practical result that it produces, the argument is also contrary to the purpose of the “natural born Citizen” clause which is to make sure that the President and Commander in Chief of the Military is born within the full and complete political, military, and legal allegiance of the United States which is needed to satisfy the national security purpose of the “natural born Citizen” clause and which is unique to the singular and all-powerful constitutional Office of President and Commander in Chief of the Military.


ajtelles said...

Hmmm...

Mr. Apuzzo, has any obot ever persuasively and convincingly explained to you why the ONLY mention of 'natural born Citizen' in the founding documents, the Declaration of Independence, the Articles of Confederation, the U.S. Constitution, contrasts 'natural born Citizen' and 'Citizen' in the SAME Clause 5, in the SAME sentence, separated by a comma and the word 'or' that was obviously put there for a definite clarifying reason, which was separated by a second comma and the words 'at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution' that were also obviously included for coherent continuity?

Just wonderin'.

Art

Stranger said...

Mario, I'd like to share a portion of what may be my final elucidation on the true meaning of natural born citizen, which remains clearly at odds with your position.

Cities & Citizens; Natural vs Legal
~ ~ ~ ~
[All of the areas of law related to the meaning of citizenship is directly connected to the meaning of what a natural born citizen is because none of them is directly connected to common sense, common language, and natural law. The difference between those two points of reference is as obvious as the difference between “a legal born citizen” and “a natural born citizen”. That difference becomes starkly manifest by the answer to a simple, stupid question that you should think about for half a second, -since it leads to a profound follow-up question, and it is: “Do governments have the authority to grant citizenship?”
The obvious answer is “yes”, but a thinking mind will then ask: “Do only governments provide citizenship? Is citizenship something that comes only from government and its laws? Or is there another means by which citizenship is acquired?”
If there is no other means, then all citizens are citizens via law, and the law or laws that grant citizenship can be identified and quoted. But if there is another means, that would mean that citizenship is also acquired by a means other than law. That would mean citizenship could exist which is outside of the legal system, beyond it, pre-dating it even and more fundamental than the legal system itself.
If it exists, that form of citizenship would have to have a label, a name, -and that name could be nothing other than natural citizenship. It would be the natural companion to legal citizenship.
Does natural citizenship exist? A similar question is: “Does natural childbirth exist?” Or does all birth come via Cesaerian section (which involves human intervention, -akin to legal intervention)?
If natural citizenship exists, then by definition, it is not legal citizenship because it would not involve the human (legal) interference of government but would instead exist regardless of legal mandate. It would be beyond the law. It would not exist within the legal sphere, but the legal sphere would exist aside from it, co-existent with it and definitely distinguishable from it.
What would distinguish legal citizenship from natural citizenship; legal citizens from natural citizens? The answer is simple; it is the nature of how citizenship is acquired, -whether it is by legal means or natural means.
After the demise of all of those citizens who lived before the adoption of the Constitution, only natural born citizens would be eligible. That means that instead of 100% of free male American citizens being eligible, only 97-98% would be eligible. They were the sons of Americans.
The sons of foreigners from thenceforth would not be allowed to be President. That hair was split by the meaning of the word “natural”, as opposed to the meaning of “born citizen” because some born as Americans were only legal citizens and not natural citizens, (even though they were citizens from birth) because they were not born to Americans but were born to foreigners.

The five-page exposition explains the English history and concept of "citizen", it originating in the restricted membership of cities.

As a pdf:
http://h2ooflife.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/cities-natural-vs-legal.pdf
As a blog post:
http://h2ooflife.wordpress.com/2013/03/31/cities-citizen…tural-vs-legal/
Adrien Nash

MichaelN said...

Here is a link to a forum where a poster "InformedConsent" has come up with some interesting arguments and material, particularly a page from a book which says that native-born children to aliens are themselves aliens.

Quote:
"Here we have proof that children born in the U.S. to alien fathers were indeed considered aliens from the time of ratification of the Constitution. There's no denying that the Framers indeed intended 'natural born citizen' to mean born in the U.S. to U.S. citizen parents. Published in 1817:"

Here's a link to the forum.

http://www.city-data.com/forum/politics-other-controversies/1408855-birther-brigade-going-after-rubio-now-250.html

Here's a link to the image of the page from the book (to view it, copy and paste it to the URL address bar of your browser)

http://ia700404.us.archive.org/BookReader/BookReaderImages.php?zip=/18/items/digestofselectbr00robe/digestofselectbr00robe_jp2.zip&file=digestofselectbr00robe_jp2/digestofselectbr00robe_0050.jp2&scale=3&rotate=0

MichaelN said...

Stranger said ....

"If natural citizenship exists, then by definition, it is not legal citizenship"

It's both if the law-makers choose so.

Have you read through the decision of the Minor v Happersett case?

"To determine, then, who were citizens of the United States before the adoption of the amendment it is necessary to ascertain what persons originally associated themselves together to form the nation, and what were afterwards admitted to membership.

Looking at the Constitution itself we find that it was ordained and established by "the people of the United States," and then going further back, we find that these were the people of the several States that had before dissolved the political bands which connected them with Great Britain, and assumed a separate and equal station among the powers of the earth, and that had by Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union, in which they took the name of "the United States of America," entered into a firm league of friendship with each other for their common defence, the security of their liberties and their mutual and general welfare, binding themselves to assist each other against all force offered to or attack made upon them, or any of them, on account of religion, sovereignty, trade, or any other pretence whatever.

Whoever, then, was one of the people of either of these States when the Constitution of the United States was adopted, became ipso facto a citizen -- a member of the nation created by its adoption. He was one of the persons associating together to form the nation, and was, consequently, one of its original citizens. As to this there has never been a doubt. Disputes have arisen as to whether or not certain persons or certain classes of persons were part of the people at the time, but never as to their citizenship if they were."

Unknown said...

Article 2 does not say what country you have to be a NBC of so i feel my wife who was born in the philippines to filipino parents is eligible for office of President.I did not know ankeny judge wrote that minor only had doubts about natural born citizens, i thought that was just obot nonsense. Things are pretty bad in US when at least 2 state judges blatantly lie about a unanimous supreme court case and are still on bench.

Mario Apuzzo, Esq. said...

Stranger and leo drosia,

A “natural born Citizen” is a child born in a country to parents who were its “citizens” at the moment of the child’s birth.

This definition is not the product of only natural law. It is also the product of positive law.

Natural law gives birth to the jus sanguinis doctrine which provides that allegiance and citizenship are inherited from one’s parents at the moment of birth. Hence, natural law and the jus sanguinis doctrine provide the foundation for requiring that for a child to be “natural-born,” the child must be born to two “citizen” parents.

Positive law (constitutions, statutes, or common law) provides the legal basis for the jus soli doctrine which states that allegiance and citizenship are acquired from being born in a country. Hence, positive law and the jus soli doctrine provide the foundation for requiring that for a child to be “natural-born,” the child must be born in the country.

This mixed natural law/positive law rule became the definition of a “natural-born citizen” under the law of nations. This law of nations definition was accepted by most civilized nations because of reason, with that reason being that a “natural-born citizen” child is born in allegiance and citizenship to only one nation, thereby avoiding conflicting birth allegiances and citizenships caused by applying only the rule of jus sanguinis, in which case the nation of the place of birth can still apply jus soli and thereby give the child at birth a conflicting allegiance and citizenship, or only the rule of jus soli, in which case if both parents are not “citizens” of the nation on whose territory their child is born, the foreign nation of one parent or both parents can still apply jus sanguinis and thereby give to the child at birth multiple allegiances and citizenships. Apart from love of country, allegiance and citizenship has serious practical consequences when it comes to political, military, and legal jurisdiction that a nation exerts and claims over a person. To what nation a person belongs and to what nation one owes such obligations can under mixed allegiances and citizenships become problematic not only for the person, but also for the nations involved.

See Emer de Vattel Section 212 and 215 of The Law of Nations (1758). We can come to the inescapable conclusion, from, among other U.S. Supreme Court and lower court cases, Minor v. Happersett (1875) and U.S. Wong Kim Ark (1898) that our nation adopted the law of nations definition of a “natural born Citizen” as part of our American national common law at the time the Framers drafted the “natural born Citizen” clause (not to be confounded with the “international law” rule of citizenship that prevailed at the time of the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment).

Ray said...

MichaelN

The Digest of British Statutes was posted upthread by "ThaLightGuy".

Ray said...

Lower courts are bound by decisions of a superior court, however a court's discussion, judicial dicta, is not authoritative and not to be followed when it is erroneous.

The discussion in Ark is erroneous when it claims:

"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."

This is an error of fact. The same (prior, colonial) rule did not apply "in the United States [after the Declaration of Independence]" and it did not "[continue] to prevail under the Constitution as originally established".

For one thing, the rule was not uniform in the colonies. For example, Connecticut never adopted English common law.

Secondly, after the Declaration of Independence and before the adoption of the Constitution, naturalization was a function of State governments. Delaware, Maryland, South Carolina, and Virginia had specific naturalization statutes. The colonial rule did not apply "in the United States [after the Declaration of Independence]"

The rules were not uniform either prior to the Declaration of Independence, or subsequently and prior to the adoption of the Constitution. The rule of naturalization was made uniform upon the legislation under the Constitution. The colonial rule did not "[continue] to prevail under the Constitution as originally established".

So this portion of the discussion can not be relied upon by lower courts.

Mario Apuzzo, Esq. said...

Ray,

I of II

You are absolutely correct regarding Justice Gray’s “same rule” quote. He said:

“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.”

Justice Gray is wrong in what he said. The Naturalization Acts of 1790, 1795, 1802, and 1855 long ago had already abrogated any English common law jus soli rule from application on the national level. These statutes treated children born in the United States to alien parents as alien born and in need of naturalization. Hence, there no longer was any English common law jus soli rule for national citizenship.

After the adoption of the Constitution, states could continue to make citizens at birth, but those citizens were only state citizens at birth, not national citizens at birth. Moreover, states could no longer naturalize anyone to become a state citizen or national citizen after birth.

In any event, the common law of the states was not uniform as you correctly point out. St. George Tucker brilliantly explained in his Commentaries how the national government could not have possibly adopted the English common law that most but not all the states selectively adopted on any one subject.

The unanimous U.S. Supreme Court in Minor v. Happersett in 1875 correctly recognized that the Framers did not adopt any state common law rule of jus soli citizenship. In fact, Minor did not discuss at all the English common law or even how the states defined citizenship. It referred to a “common law” to which the Framers looked when they drafted the “natural born Citizen” clause. Given the common law definition that Minor gave of a “natural-born citizen,” i.e., a child born in a country to parents who were its “citizens” at the moment of the child’s birth and that all others were “aliens or foreigners,” that common law could only be American national common law, with its origins in the law of nations, not the English common law which made no reference to a child’s parents and which was selectively adopted among most but not all of the states.

Continued . . .

Mario Apuzzo, Esq. said...

II of II

Justice Gray conflates and confounds English common law which selectively became the common law of the states with American national common law to which Minor referred. That is the reason there is so much confusion reconciling Minor’s use of the term “common law” with Wong Kim Ark’s use of that same term. Justice Gray provides no authority for his statement that the English common law jus soli rule which one or more states may have adopted continued to prevail on the national level “in the United States” after the American Revolution. He cites to cases discussing and applying state common law on unrelated issues and some that referred only to state citizenship. But those cases do not prove that any English common law/state common law rule for citizenship was adopted on the national level “in the United States.” Justice Fuller in dissent was absolutely correct when he criticized the majority of the Court for applying the English common law jus soli rule to define American national citizenship.

What this means is that Justice Gray fudged making Wong a “citizen of the United States” at birth under the Fourteenth Amendment via the English common law. This does not mean that he was incorrect on the definition of a “natural born Citizen,” for citing and quoting Minor and the American national common law definition of a “natural-born citizen” that it gave in 1875, i.e., a child born in a country to parents who were its “citizens” at the moment of the child’s birth, he gave no definition of that clause that was any different from that definition.

I have an essay on Wong Kim Ark that I hope to publish soon which discusses these points in greater detail.

Anonymous said...

Mario wrote: " We can come to the inescapable conclusion...that our nation adopted the law of nations definition of a “natural born Citizen” as part of our American national common law at the time the Framers drafted the “natural born Citizen” clause."

We absolutely *cannot* come to such a conclusion because it would be falsely premised on the dim and distant conceptions of men who lived over a century after the Constitution was written, -men who did not know nor understand the thinking of our founding fathers, all of whom were natural born citizens by being born to natives of their home colonies. They didn't require the President to be something other than what they were because they were the natural pool of candidates for the office. They were all born to American fathers and that is what made them natural born citizens.

Anonymous said...

Ray wrote: "The rule of naturalization was made uniform upon the legislation under the Constitution."
Yes, and my assumption is that that is all that the naturalization acts did. Meaning that the States continued to be the immigration and naturalization authorities throughout the nation with no federal INS existing since no constitutional provision was made to create it.

Anonymous said...

Mario wrote: "Justice Gray is wrong in what he said. The Naturalization Acts...abrogated any English common law jus soli rule from application on the national level. These statutes treated children born in the United States to alien parents as alien born and in need of naturalization."

I'd like to hear your opinion as to how justice Gray could have made a statement so opposite to the truth. Do you lean toward assuming that he was flat out lying? Or that he was incredibly presumptuously ignorant?

Anonymous said...

Mario wrote: "...American national common law, with its origins in the law of nations, not the English common law... which was selectively adopted among most but not all of the states."

I hope to learn that it was the reverse; -that few colonies-states adopted jus soli for children of foreigners but most did not. Better to have the scales tilted against jus soli among the colonies and states than have it having been more of the rule. Could you share the source of your belief that it was the reverse? If you are correct then I'll have to revise what I've written in many expositions.

MichaelN said...

Ray said...

"Lower courts are bound by decisions of a superior court, however a court's discussion, judicial dicta, is not authoritative and not to be followed when it is erroneous.

The discussion in Ark is erroneous when it claims:

"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."

This is an error of fact. The same (prior, colonial) rule did not apply "in the United States [after the Declaration of Independence]" and it did not "[continue] to prevail under the Constitution as originally established".

Response:

Ray, given that Gray was speaking about the English, then would it not be true that the English maintained the same rule for the English subjects?

Here is the part that precedes what you quoted.

"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."

i.e. the same rule continued for the English, but it is possible that Gray did mean that it also applied to citizenship in the US, when at that time it was still the individual states which determined State citizenship via the English model.

Point to note is that Gray said "in the United States" which may well be a reference to places "in" the United States, but not necessarily was the rule adopted BY the federal government of the US.

Mario Apuzzo, Esq. said...

h2ooflife,

So what is your understanding of the early naturalization acts? Do you believe that they also acted upon children born in the United States? If you so believe, tell us how.

phil stone said...

Mario - I am curious about how meaningful congressional oaths of office might be. Looked up Marbury vs Madison about judicial review. Does Marbury mean that legislators have no responsibility to judge the constitutionality of their own actions and can legally produce un-constitutional laws?? old Marine Phil Stone

Anonymous said...

Dear Mario, I wish this blog template carried a warning about clicking on one of the identification logos which switches to a page announcing you need to sign in first, and then when switching back to the blog and one's typed in comments, the comments box is then empty and all the work of writing is gone somewhere over the rainbow. That seriously sucks. But I will take the time to re-write them due to their significance.

Justice Gray wrote: ",aliens, while residing in the dominions possessed by the Crown of England,"
A major logic error occurs when one misconstrues the meaning of "residing". That error results in: "and therefore every child born in England of alien parents was a natural-born subject unless the child of an ambassador..."
Residing does not mean visiting because only residents are residing, visitors are not domiciled permanent residents and therefore are not subject to the jurisdiction of the crown and its government. They are only subject to civil law, not political law. They can't be drafted for national defense as can subjects and denizens.
The falsehood that all children born in the king's domain are his subjects is akin to a hypothetical in which Walt Disney was King of Disney World and every baby born there belonged to him even though they left the same day and never returned. Or make it Monaco, or Lichtenstein. Visitors and their children, whether born, unborn, or newly born, are not the subjects of anyone other than their own nation's sovereign if it has one. But the "residing" error is a fundamental error that the Obamunist rely on to justify the assertion that natural born subjects are equivalent to natural born citizens, which rejects all thoughts about the meaning of jurisdiction and how one is or isn't under it.

And that fact is apart from the separate fact that children of denizens, although deemed to be subjects, were not natural born subjects. But in time the language became blurred, lazy and conflated, using just one term to describe both children of natives and children of foreigner since they both had the same rights.

Anonymous said...

Mario wrote: "Justice Gray is wrong in what he said [about] The Naturalization Acts [which]treated children born in the United States to alien parents as alien born and in need of naturalization."
I'm in full agreement, but I'd be interested to hear your opinion as to why and how justice Gray could have made a statement so opposite to the truth. Do you lean toward assuming that he was flat out lying? Or that he was incredibly presumptuously ignorant? I tilt toward ignorant and biased presumption rather than lying. But I don't assume that a whole lot of intellectual dishonestly wasn't going on in his mind.

Anonymous said...

Part 1.
Mario wrote: "from 1802 to 1855, any child born out of the United States, even to citizen parents, was considered by Congress to be an alien."

Naturalization Act 1802, Section 4:
"and the children of persons who now are or have been citizens of the United States shall though born out of the limits and jurisdiction of the United States be considered as citizens of the United States provided that the right of citizenship shall not descend to persons whose fathers have never resided within the United States,"

Mario's assertion is astonishingly inaccurate. Children of Americans, born abroad, were by mandate of Congress declared to be that which they were by birth, Americans. Their instruction in the Act was to force all officials of all immigration related offices, departments, services or agencies, as well as all courts of all levels to recognize foreign-born children of Americans as being Americans and not foreigners.
Originally, in 1790, Congress ordered that they be recognized as natural born citizens because any son born to French Ambassador Thomas Jefferson or British Ambassador John Adams might have been barred from eligibility to the office of President due to the Constitution's overlooking the issue of foreign birth. No doubt they made that issue clear to the first Congress while they were serving their nation abroad.

Anonymous said...

Part 2.
Perhaps the 1802 Naturalization Act's significant words need an entire exposition to clarify them, namely the words "BE CONSIDERED AS", and "RIGHT OF CITIZENSHIP" and "DESCEND".

"Be considered as" means the same as in the immediate aftermath of two people taking the wedding vows. From thenceforth they shall be considered as man and wife. Why? Because they *are* man and wife. So also, children of Americans *are* Americans, and every official in every port must recognize them as being such.
They are NOT Americans by Law but by nature, regardless of the law, which only serves to openly imply that fact via its mandate.
It is a fact because of the next word; "descend" as in descent. They are Americans by descent, and descent has nothing to do with law, since it is outside of law and is an element of the realm of natural law.

Every off-spring of every species, and every off-spring of every group member is what they are by natural descent. By descent people are members of families, tribes, societies, and countries, and as members of nations they are known as CITIZENS.

Their membership in their nation is by "Right of Citizenship". It is not by *permission* of government or law, it is by right, the same kind of right which produced the government and it just powers. Those rights are the ones with which man is endowed by his creator. They are the foundation of morally just democratic republican government authority. The Right of Citizenship is via the Right of Descent. It produces natural citizens. All other forms of citizenship are legal citizenship, and no legal citizen is eligible to be President.

Anonymous said...

Part 3.
If your citizenship is via permission of law then you are not a natural citizen because that citizenship is a natural membership, -a bond of relatedness from which members form by consensus a government that derives the authority to have authority and make laws from their free will choice.

Cross a poodle with a Labrador and you get a Labradoodle (honestly), -a hybrid like Barack Obama, which is not a natural poodle nor a natural Labrador. But what it is is not dependent on where it was born, just as the American-ness of John McCain is not dependent on American law, nor American borders, nor American jurisdiction because it springs from natural law. He was American by birth, by descent, by right of citizenship, and that right is a natural right making him a natural American citizen.
Obama is neither a natural American nor a legal American, but is instead an American by the federal policy in effect since about 1899, derived from the opinion of Attorney General John Griggs regarding the Wrong, err..Wong opinion. That policy could be reversed by Presidential order. Obama could declare, in effect, that he himself is not an American citizen, and he would be in the right in doing so.
obama--nation.com

Anonymous said...

Suppose that Congress passed a law that said that all males born in America owe 5 years of their life to military service. Suppose that as a consequence 65 percent of couples pregnant with a boy traveled to Canada or Mexico to deliver their son, resulting in 65% of American sons not being native born. Are none of them therefore natural American citizens? Would that 65% of American boys be destined to never be eligible to be President? Let's up the percentage to 95%. What's the answer now? Any different? Would they all be unnatural Americans? Would their citizenship be 100% dependent on federal law? Could one vote in one house of Congress determine the answer? Perhaps the Vice-President's vote. Or would they all be Americans by descent, by nature, by right?

Anonymous said...

I forgot to mention one more important word in the Naturalization Act of 1802: "and the children of persons who now are or have been citizens of the United States shall though born out of the limits and jurisdiction of the United States be considered as citizens of the United States provided That the right of citizenship shall not descend to persons whose FATHERS have never resided within the United States"

State and national membership was transmitted solely by the father, the head of the family, the one whose citizenship determined that of his foreign-born wife, she assuming his American citizenship upon marriage to him, as with her/their children. The citizenship of the wife and mother was a moot subject because it automatically was American via being married to one. So to say that a natural born citizen must be born to two American citizens disregards reality because only the citizenship of the father mattered. In 1787 there was no equivalent to today's political correctness.
It's simpler, more direct, and more historically accurate to say that a natural born citizen is one who was fathered by an American...according to the status quo of 1787.
It's simpler, more direct, and more historically accurate to say that a natural born citizen is one who was fathered by an American...according to the status quo of 1787.
American fathers were everything. American mothers...not so much. American borders? Insignificant, federally, and probably for State citizenship was well. A son of say...the President, if born while he was visiting another state, would his son not enter the world as a citizen of his father's homeland, -the state of his birth, ancestry and residence? How exactly could any state government finesse any claim of sovereignty over a child born in it to a citizen of another state? Would his son be "stateless" because his father's home state would refuse to recognize him as one of their own? It wouldn't work in practice nor principle. Same goes at the national level. Borders are irrelevant to natural citizenship. They are paramount though to legal citizenship because without birth within them, no citizenship is granted.

Now I'm done for a good while. I see the things that I've stated as facts, or undeniable logic, but I welcome any facts that might counter them. I've discovered a lot, but not everything.

phil stone said...

Mario - I was curious about how meaningful congressional oaths of office might be. Looked up Marbury vs Madison about judicial review. Does Marbury mean that legislators have no responsibility to judge on the constitutionality of the laws they propose and harness us with even though it may be obvious to the most casual observer that they violate the intent of the constitution?? old Marine Phil Stone

Mario Apuzzo, Esq. said...

h2ooflife @ April 11, 2013 at 2:59AM,

Regarding the Naturalization Act of 1802, you said that “Mario’s assertion is astonishingly inaccurate.” Maybe that should have raised a red flag for you. You are not reading the 1802 Naturalization Act correctly.

". . . and the children of persons who now are or have been citizens of the United States shall . . . "

This means that the child's parent had to be a citizen of the United States either before or at the time the Act was passed in 1802. If the parent became a citizen after that time, the children could not benefit from the law. Hence, any child who was born out of the United States to U.S. citizen parents who became citizens after 1802 was alien born and in need of naturalization. Surely, with such child being alien born, that child could not be a "natural born Citizen" as you contend.

The harshness of the 1802 Act was remedied by the Naturalization Act of 1855 which did not put a time limit on when the parents had to be "citizens of the United States." But again, the 1855 did not declare those children born out of the United States to U.S. "citizen" parents to be "natural born Citizens." Rather, they were just “citizens of the United States,” which nomenclature followed that of the Naturalization Act of 1795.

Anonymous said...

Mario wrote: "You are not reading the 1802 Naturalization Act correctly." Apparently so. I failed to recognize the same error that I believe the Congress overlooked (lack of explicit legalese covering every implication and possibility) but I believe that their oversight should not be construed to mean that they intended its unintended effect.
It's inconceivable that they intended that every child of every American ambassador, diplomat, military attache, soldier, sailor, merchant, or scholar born abroad was to be treated by their own government as an alien in need of naturalization. You made the statement that indicated that they intended just that, or did you mean that that is simply what they passed, unknowingly?

Mario wrote: "the 1855 [Act] did not declare those children born out of the United States to U.S. citizen parents to be "natural born Citizens. ~ Surely, with such child being alien born, that child could not be a "natural born Citizen" as you contend."

It's true that no child that is alien-born can be a natural American citizen, but they were not "alien born" -they were American-born on foreign soil. Or foreign-born of America blood.
They were Americans by political inheritance.
The truth of the matter is that what Congress did or didn't do was irrelevant to what they were by nature. Congress cannot alter nor circumvent natural law, the source of their national membership.
Law is irrelevant to natural citizenship since it exists before law is even brought into being by the natural citizens who create the government. Their natural membership in their country is by natural right, not by laws or opinions issued in the future nor the past.

It doesn't matter what anyone, including Congress, labels them or fails to label them. Their foreign-born children are what they are by natural political inheritance, being off-spring of natives of the country and thus being natives also like those who gave them life. The child is what the father is, unless he has never lived in the nation of his own nationality. At that generation of foreign birth,(the second) natural law switches to the foreign homeland.

Mario Apuzzo, Esq. said...

H2ooflife, Stranger, A.R. Nash (all the same person),

I of II

You and I continue to disagree on what is the correct definition of a “natural born Citizen” and what was the meaning and intent of the Naturalization Act of 1802.

(1) Relying strictly upon the citizenship of the father, in your definition of a “natural born Citizen,” you continue to deny the relevancy of the place of birth and the citizenship of the mother.

Vattel in Section 212 of the Law of Nations explained:

“The citizens are the members of the civil society: bound by this society by certain duties, and subject to its authority, they equally participate in its advantages. The native, or natural-born citizens, are those born in the country, of parents who are citizens.”

Vattel in Section 215 of the same treatise explained:

“It is asked whether the children born of citizens in a foreign country are citizens? The laws have decided this question in several countries, and their regulations must be followed. By the law of nature alone, children follow the condition of their fathers, and enter into all their rights; the place of birth produces no change in this particular, and cannot of itself furnish any reason from taking from a child what nature has given him; I say ‘of itself,’ for civil or political laws may, for particular reasons, ordain otherwise. But I suppose that the father has not entirely quitted his country in order to settle elsewhere. If he has fixed his abode in a foreign country, he is become a member of another society, at least as a perpetual inhabitant; and his children will be members of it also.”

Emer de Vattel, The Law of Nations (London 1797) (1st ed. Neuchatel 1758).

Vattel explained the great distinction that exists between children born in a country and those born out of it. He said that nature alone gives to children born out of the country the same birth status enjoyed by those born in the country to “citizen” parents. But he concedes that governments have power to pass positive laws for “civil or political” reasons altering the birth status of those foreign-born children. It is for this reason that the law of nations’ definition of a “natural born citizen” is a product of both natural and positive law and provides that only a child born in the country to parents who are its “citizens” at the moment of the child’s birth are “natural-born citizens.” This is the only definition which allows a child to be born with sole allegiance and citizenship to only one nation.

The Founders and Framers were greatly influenced by the writings of Vattel and their admiration is reflected in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. Hence, with the birth status being left in the hands of “the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God, Congress has no constitutional power over who shall be a “natural born Citizen.” Under the Ninth Amendment, the people’s right to be a “natural born Citizen” and under the Tenth Amendment the power to decide who is a “natural born Citizen” is retained by the people. This natural law/positive law definition of a “natural-born citizen” became our American national common law definition of the term which the Framers incorporated into the Constitution. See Minor v. Happersett (1875); U.S. v. Wong Kim Ark (1898) (both defined a “natural-born citizen” as a child born in the country to parents who were its “citizens” at the time of the child’s birth). In fact, the unanimous U.S. Supreme Court in Minor even explained that at common law, any child who was not born in the country to “citizen” parents was an “alien or foreigner.”

Continued . . .

Mario Apuzzo, Esq. said...

II of II

(2) So that we could have additional national “citizens” and not be restricted to only the ones that were defined under American national common law, the Constitution gives Congress the power over naturalization. This power is exclusive to Congress and does not belong to the states. Hence, Congress was given plenary power over who shall be made by positive law a “citizen of the United States” at birth or after birth (not to be conflated or confounded with a “natural-born citizen”). Congress first exercised its national naturalization power through the Naturalization Act of 1790. It followed with the Naturalization Act of 1795. These statutes treated children born in the United States to alien parents as alien born and in need of naturalization.

With respect to children born out of the U.S. to U.S. “citizen” parents, the 1790 act said that they “shall be considered as natural born citizens.” The 1795 Act removed that language and replaced it with “shall be considered as citizens of the United States.” Congress also passed the Naturalization Act 1802which become even more restrictive. Given the language that Congress chose (in referring to the parents of the infants born or to be born, it called them “persons who now are or have been citizens of the United States” and allowed such citizenship only if the child had a U.S. “citizen” father [the mother did not count] who had resided in the U.S.) in that Act, Congress decided that over time, it no longer wanted children born out of the U.S. to U.S. “citizen” parents to automatically be “citizens of the United States” a birth. By using the language “who now are or have been citizens” when referring to the child’s parents, the 1802 law grandfathered those parents (fathers) who were or had been “citizens of the United States” on or before 1802 so as to allow their foreign-born children to become at birth “citizens of the United States.” With the 1802 Act, those children born out of the country to post-1802 U.S. “citizen” parents now had to satisfy Congress’s naturalization laws to become “citizens of the United States” and could now acquire that status only after birth.

The strictness of the 1802 Act was recognized in our nation by various persons. Daniel Webster, in 1848, proposed a bill that would have established a child’s U.S. citizen mother residing in the U.S. in addition to the U.S. citizen resident father as another source by which a child born out of the country could obtain the status of a “citizen of the United States” at birth. The bill failed. Justice Gray in Wong Kim Ark explained how Horace Binney took up the fight in his 1853 essay, Alienigenae of the United States (with three different versions being published). It is said that it was Binney’s essay which convinced Congress to pass the Naturalization Act of 1855 which then removed the word “parents” and replaced it with “fathers” and said: “All children heretofore born or hereafter born out of the limits and jurisdiction of the United States, whose fathers were or may be at the time of their birth citizens thereof, are declared to be citizens of the United States.” So while Congress now put no limit on the time at which parents of foreign-born children had to be U.S. “citizens,” it expressly restricted the source parent to U.S. “citizen” fathers.

So, as we can see, I do not agree with your definition of a “natural born Citizen.” The correct definition of the clause is found in both American national common law and in how Congress through it early naturalization acts made exceptions to that common law definition and thereby added to the “citizens of the United States,” both at birth and after birth, acting upon only those children who were not born in the country to U.S. “citizen” parents. Congress also constitutionalized its action in the Fourteenth Amendment, which again, textually and by intent only defines a “citizen of the United States” at birth and not a “natural born Citizen.” I also do not agree with your reading of the Naturalization Act of 1802.

Anonymous said...

I see several logic errors that call for correction which will take quite a bit of time, but here's a quote from something I've just posted to my blog which I'm sure you'll find interesting.

~Suppose that John McCain was the son of Five-Star General & President Dwight D. Eisenhower. Who wants to step up to the plate to argue that he would and should be ineligible to be President because he would be a potential threat to the nation by having been born with dual allegiance and loyalty? Who volunteers to argue that in the minds of our brilliant and insightful founding fathers, he should never be trusted to not be a secret Panamanian patriot who would not have America's best interests at heart and might work to undermine them?

The flip side of the founding fathers having no confidence in, but rather distrust of, the patriotism of American-born sons of loyal British subjects and aristocrats, is their trust in the loyalty of sons of patriotic American fathers, regardless of where their sons were born, -be it Boston or Bangkok, Philadelpia or the Philippines; -be they born to a peasant or a President.

Their confidence in American fathers, -who were raised to believe in freedom, -the very reason for the existence of the American colonies, led them to author the first naturalization act with the expressed mandate that American children born abroad were to not only be accepted by the U.S. government magistrates and officers as being American citizens, but even natural born citizens, -and thus indistinguishable from their domestically born brethren, -with eligibility for the presidency being their natural birthright.

They thought they were making it perfectly clear that sons of American fathers are natural citizens of their father's nation no matter where they are born, but because a later Congress dropped the words "natural born" while retaining only "citizen of the United States" (presidential eligibility not being the focus of a naturalization act) error arose in minds that leapt to the false conclusion that they must therefore not be natural born citizens simply because they were no longer being labeled as such. Worse than that, they presumed that they were viewed by Congress as being aliens in need of naturalization law to make them American citizens!

But not calling a red rose red does not make it not red. Not labeling something with all of the adjectives that describe it does not alter what it is. It is what it is, especially if it is what it is naturally, -without any human interference (or legislation).

John McCain would be a natural American citizen even if born on the moon, just as Barark Obama would be a natural born Kenyan even if born in America, because one's natural citizenship comes by descent, descent from one's father,...
http://h2ooflife.wordpress.com/2013/04/12/allegiance/

Anonymous said...

(Sorry, I forgot to mention the title: The Truth about Allegiance & Natural Citizenship

~Allegiance: Bastard Child of Royal Despots )

Mario Apuzzo, Esq. said...

H2ooflife, Stranger, A.R. Nash (all the same person),

(1) John McCain is a “natural born Citizen,” not because of any reason that you have provided, but rather because he was born “in the country” to U.S. “citizen” parents. His U.S. “citizen” parents were serving the armies of the United States when McCain was born in Panama. Hence, he is reputed born in the United States. See Emer de Vattel, The Law of Nations, Section 217 (1758) (“children born out of the country in the armies of the state . . . are reputed born in the country, for a citizen, who is absent with his family on the service of the state, but still dependent on it, and subject to its jurisdiction, cannot be considered as having quitted its territory.”). So, being born in the United States to “citizen” parents, McCain is a “natural born Citizen.”

(2) One does not qualify as a “natural born Citizen” based on whether he or she is a “potential threat” to the United States or whether he or she can be trusted. Rather, one qualifies for the birth status if one meets the objective tests of birth in the country to U.S. “citizen” parents. Hence, the Founders and Framers disqualified “the American-born sons of loyal British subjects and aristocrats” not only from being “natural born Citizens,” but also from being basic “citizens.”

(3) A “natural born Citizen” needs no act of Congress for his or her natural birth status. If the Founders and Framers had believed that children born out of the United States to U.S. “citizen” parents had a “natural birthright” to the status of “natural born Citizen,” the First Congress would not have provided for these children through a naturalization act in 1790, saying that these children “shall be considered as natural born citizens” (they did not say that they were “natural born citizens”).

Congress has no power to deny a “natural born Citizen” that natural birth status. With Article II, Section 1, Clause 5 requiring all future presidents to be “natural born Citizen,” the Third Congress would not have through the Naturalization Act of 1795 removed that 1790 naturalization language and replaced it with other naturalization language which provided that those children born out of the United States to U.S. “citizen” parents “shall be considered as citizens of the United States.” So, our early Congress not only believed that it had to naturalize these foreign-born children to be considered as “natural born citizens,” but then it also removed that status from them and replaced it with that of a “citizen of the United States.” These actions by early Congress, many members of which sat in the constitutional convention, demonstrate that it never viewed children born out of the United States to U.S. “citizen” parents as true “natural born Citizens.”

(4) You keep insisting that, without more, children born out of the United States to a U.S. “citizen” mother is included as a “natural born Citizen.” You do not give arguments that are based on what the law is, but rather on what you think the law ought to be. You do not provide any source for your argument showing that our nation ever adopted a definition of a “natural born Citizen” which included such children as “natural born Citizens.” Your personal opinion as to the definition of a “natural born Citizen” does not count without any historical and legal support for it.

Anonymous said...

I, arnash, said ..."If natural citizenship exists, then by definition, it is not legal citizenship"

MichaelN said: It's both if the law-makers choose so.

my reply: Lawmakers can say in legislation anything they want, but if their definition of a thing is not accurate, then even their authority cannot make it true. If they say that every single child born is a twin, that doesn't make it so. Same with the meaning and truth about natural citizenship. The legal definition of a thing can be and is different from the actual meaning in some cases, as in the example of "statutory rape". It's a legal fiction since rape by definition is involuntary whereas most "statutory rapes" are voluntary.
Natural citizenship is as described in your excellent quote from Minor v Happersett. It's a perfect example of natural citizenship which has no federal origin whatsoever. ["Looking at the Constitution itself we find that it was ordained and established by "the people of the United States,"...we find that these were the people of the several States that had...by Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union...entered into a firm league of friendship with each other,... Whoever, then, was one of the people of either of these States when the Constitution of the United States was adopted, became ipso facto a citizen -- a *member* of the nation created by its adoption. He was one of the *persons associating together* to form the nation, and was, consequently, one of its original citizens."]
Such membership /citizenship predated the establishment of a government that only had the authority to make a uniform rule regarding naturalization in the state courts that naturalized state immigrants.
Such naturalization provides *legal* citizenship. Congress has no authority to provide legal citizenship to those who are born with *natural* citizenship since its authority ends at making national rules for foreigners seeking citizenship, foreign spouses of Americans, and children born to couples with mixed nationalities.

The creature (government and lawmakers) cannot meddle in the issue of the authentic nature of its creator (the People), anymore than a robot could pass judgement on the Engineering Degree of its creator. So your assertion that Congress has such authority is incorrect. h2ooflife.wordpress.com

Mario Apuzzo, Esq. said...

H2ooflife, Stranger, A.R. Nash (all the same person),


You said: “But not calling a red rose red does not make it not red. Not labeling something with all of the adjectives that describe it does not alter what it is. It is what it is, especially if it is what it is naturally, -without any human interference (or legislation).”

These are classic examples of begging the question. You simply assume the rose is red without demonstrating that it is red. You simply assume that something “is” something without proving what that thing is. Finally, you assume something is “natural” without providing proof of it. You cannot simply assume the truth of what is at issue and act as though it has already been proven. Rather, you must demonstrate by sufficient evidence that what is at issue actually has been proven to be true by you or some other person.

Anonymous said...

Mario wrote of me: "(4) You keep insisting that...children born out of the United States to a U.S. “citizen” mother is included as a “natural born Citizen.”
You must be confusing what I've written with someone else. Now if you had said "father", I wouldn't argue that such a view is demonstrably wrong. Citizenship descents from the head of the household. If the father is alive, then that would be him, if not, then it passed from his widow. I can't imagine that you would disagree.
You've misunderstood the truth behind the logic of what Vattel wrote because he didn't spell it out plainly when he used the term "quitted his territory"
Vattel: “children born out of the country...are reputed born in the country, for a citizen, who is absent with his family in the service of the state, but still ...subject to its jurisdiction, cannot be considered as having quitted its territory.”
Those last words mean something profound; they mean left his country, abandoned membership in his society, forsook his citizenship status in favor of life in another nation. Normally, one who does that does it voluntarily as a civilian, so their children might be viewed differently by border officials and state magistrates than children of soldiers & sailors.
Being "reputed born in-country" is a legal fiction unrelated to the fundamental principle of natural law by which the political nature of a man's off-spring is the product of his political nature. His child's national membership is natural membership and natural membership is related solely to the status of the father or widowed mother, not the location where his child entered the world.
A mother's foreign delivery location doesn't alter one's natural nationality (since it's inherited) any more than a foreign place of death can alter that of one's survivors. Nature is supreme. Location alters nothing in the natural realm.
We have several conflicting viewpoints, and they begin with your view that natural born citizen is a term of art. I contend that it refers solely to natural citizenship with no other influence and that natural law is the sole basis of its meaning. That means only principles of natural law legitimately explain it. Vattel relied on those principles which I'll explain further.

Anonymous said...

Mario wrote: "(2) One does not qualify as a “natural born Citizen” based on whether he or she is a “potential threat” to the United States or whether he or she can be trusted."
You correctly espouse the fact that the founding fathers were concerned about foreign influence finding its way into the reigns of power held by the Commander-in-Chief's position. You use that concern to back the belief that they therefore required that a President be native-born or equivalent (in conformity to Vattel's observation). You missed my point that they attached no national security concern whatsoever to the location of a presidential candidates birth because it carries no significance whatsoever in alterning one's fidelity to their free homeland, -the United States.

If they felt otherwise then they would never have allowed non-natural born citizens to ever be President, but they did allow them as long as their citizenship pre-dated the Constitution. That means they felt it unnecessessary to openly disallow the likes of the defenders of Liberty from abroad, such as the Marquis de la Fayette, -or his companion, (my great ancestor) the Marquis de la Porte). After that generation, their sole focus was on limiting candidates to the 97% who had American fathers.
Fathers were everything and conveyed everything. The founders were wise enough to realize that an unremembered and unexperienced foreign land where one's mother gave one birth conveyed nothing.

A father's guidance, values, and priorities were everything, and American fathers were assumed to possess American values of Liberty and individual rights, even if they were stationed abroad like Thomas Jefferson -serving as Ambassador to France, along with is wife who could have given birth to an American son while there in Paris. I wouldn't assume that Jefferson didn't complain about the oversight of any mention of such a (hypothetical) son (as he might have fathered) being included in the Constitution. I strongly suspect an objection from him was the reason for requiring in the 1790 Act that all levels and aspects of related government recognize such sons as natural born citizens. If you had such a son who was disenfranchised from full membership in his own country, you'd probably complain also.

Congress had a definite reason to label them natural born citizens and it had nothing to do with anything other than the presidency, since that is the only subject to which natural citizenship is connected, at least publicly. Privately, as in Britain, only natural born citizens were/ are allowed to hold critical offices involving secrets on which the survival of the nation might depend, or to wield military power with the same importance, such as the control and use of nuclear bombs.

MichaelN said...

The 14th Amendment was a means to select who will be "citizens of the United States"........ it was not meant to be a mass qualifier for a whole mob to be eligible for POTUS.

I think there was in those founding times, a smudging or smearing (gray area?) of what one's heart took as a "natural born" son or daughter of the revolution, and what the new republic required to maintain security and survive; in that only citizens with the complete, highest, certain, undivided allegiance to US would be suited as meeting eligible standard for the office of POTUS.

It seems reasonable to consider that native-birth, as a criteria for POTUS eligibility, was added later, to what was already casually considered as good enough at the time, i.e. the sons and daughters of the revolution, an impassioned allocation of the term, "natural born".

The 1795 naturalization act gives weight to this, in that act of 1795, the description of a child born off-shore to a US father changed from the 1790 act's "natural born citizen", to "citizen of the United States".

Was it that the coin dropped for the Congress and the Senate around 1795?,..... maximum allegiance was not in the nature of a child born off-shore, as compared with and in contrast to the certain and undoubted highest allegiance of those who were both native-born and to citizen parents.

Was it that in the infancy years of the new US republic, "natural born" meant, generally amongst the general citizenry, born of citizens, in a casual sense, without any reference or thought in mind of POTUS eligibility?

The naturalization act of 1795, in the national interest, made it clear that it was MORE THAN having citizen parents, that made the highest eligibility type of citizen, i.e. those who would be POTUS material..... "all American boys".

Citizen parents, without native-birth was not good enough to be eligible for POTUS.

Native-birth, without citizen parents was not good enough for POTUS.

Anonymous said...

Mario wrote regarding the 1790 Naturalization Act: "our early Congress not only believed that it had to naturalize these foreign-born children to be considered as “natural born citizens,” but then it also removed that status from them and replaced it with that of a “citizen of the United States.”

Mario, You embrace the view that American children born abroad are not natural born citizens by virtue of not comforming to the non-definition definition that you have enshrined, -which would give Congress authority over them, but that throws out the baby with the bath water by rejecting any acknowledgement of natural citizenship via patrilineal descent, -apart from and independent of any other factor, namely homeland birth location.

Their intent was to correct the omission in the Constitution of any elucidation regarding the status of Americans born outside U.S. borders, and ensure that they were not treated any differently than their parents or domestically born siblings, nor denied their rightful opportunity to one day seek the office that their father might occupy later in life, -the American presidency.
If you hold to the ancient Greek, Roman, and Western view of citizenship by descent, then you should condemn the view you assume was held by the 1795, and the 1802 Congresses, -a view in which Congress is seen as believing it's supreme over nature and Nature's God and can assign and un-assign the characterization of one's citizenship as being natural or not natural (or even existent) regardless of the reality of natural law and its immuteable principle (All off-spring are universally the same as their parents).

Such a view puts the authority of Congress not only ahead of the Constitution, but ahead of the authority of the unalienable rights of the natural citizens of America who adopted it. It says in effect (like Bill Cosby's father: "I brought you into this world and I can take you out!) that Congress, with no Constitutional basis, can make natural born citizens and unmake them as well (1790 & 1795) or treat them as aliens (1802).

The wording of the 1790 Act "shall be considered as" is not a citizenship creation or alteration authority, nor a legal language fiction, it is instead a Congressional order that reality be recognized by all U.S. and state authorities. Its intent is a direct order that American children born abroad (to Ambassadors, Generals, Admirals, Consuls, Adjutant Generals, Attaches, soldiers and sailors) be recognized as what they in fact are, -and not be erroneously viewed as aliens in need of naturalization. [would you acknowledge that it is ambiguous at best?]
To support the view that you assume that they held would be to support the assumption that the Americans in Congress then did not believe in natural law, natural rights, patrilineal descent, natural citizenship beyond all law, nor the equality of all sons of American citizens, but instead believed that those not born within America's expanding borders were less American and therefore deserving of lesser rights.

You argued that by removing in the 1795 Act the label of natural born from describing Americans born abroad, Congress was somehow stripping them of that character due to removing a description which had no logical place in a naturalization act. The idea that they were stripped of that natural status is akin to an intelligence tester declaring; "Mario, you are officially a genius!" But maybe you cheated the test, or if he declared you to *not* be a genius, maybe you hadn't slept in three days, his declaration is not reality. You are a genius or not regardless of any test or any label by anyone. [disregarding the fact that it's measured by testing]

Calling natural born citizens simply "citizens" does not strip them of anything because they are what they are by nature. Not calling a dog a poodle would not alter where or not it is a poodle. It's a poodle even if one only calls it a dog, -no matter what authority one might possess.

Anonymous said...

Mario, according to Vattel, you have misconstrued his description of "les indigenes ou les naturels" into being not simply the predominant subset of natural born citizens but the only set. But Vattel disagrees:

Vattel in Section 215 of the same treatise explained:

“It is asked whether the children born of citizens in a foreign country are citizens? [The question fails to encompass reality because it doesn't delineate between the two possibilities of being citizens by nature and citizens by law,]
The laws have decided this question in several countries, and their regulations must be followed. [Yes, laws must be followed, but not because of moral authority but because of the overwhelming power of martial authority]

By *THE LAW OF NATURE ALONE*, children follow the condition of their fathers, and enter into all their rights; the place of birth PRODUCES NO CHANGE in this particular, and CANNOT OF ITSELF furnish any reason for taking from a child WHAT NATURE HAS GIVEN him; I say ‘of itself,’ for civil or political laws may, for particular reasons, ordain otherwise. [-the difference between Natural Law and Human Law. Natural Law is composed of immutable Principles of Life, while Human Law is attended by the irresistible Power of the State.]
So it's clear that Vattel acknowledges only natural citizenship via patrilineal descent. The son is what the fathers is. That's nature. That's life. That's natural descent...-with or without the existence of human law, -which changes, ~but natural law is everlasting.

What saith thee? It appears irrefutable.

Mario Apuzzo, Esq. said...

h2ooflife,

You are correct. I typed "mother" when I meant to type "father." Here is the paragraph as it should be:

(4) You keep insisting that, without more, children born out of the United States to a U.S. “citizen” father is included as a “natural born Citizen.” You do not give arguments that are based on what the law is, but rather on what you think the law ought to be. You do not provide any source for your argument showing that our nation ever adopted a definition of a “natural born Citizen” which included such children as “natural born Citizens.” Your personal opinion as to the definition of a “natural born Citizen” does not count without any historical and legal support for it.

MichaelN said...

h20oflife said ....
"If you hold to the ancient Greek, Roman, and Western view of citizenship by descent, then you should condemn the view you assume was held by the 1795, and the 1802 Congresses, -a view in which Congress is seen as believing it's supreme over nature and Nature's God and can assign and un-assign the characterization of one's citizenship as being natural or not natural (or even existent) regardless of the reality of natural law and its immuteable principle (All off-spring are universally the same as their parents)."

Lord Coke on that subject...

"if a man hath the Wardship of his own Son or Daughter, which is his heir apparent, and is Outlawed, he doth not forfeit this Wardship; for nature hath annexed it to the person of the Father"

MichaelN said...

Lord Coke (1600)on the law of nature....

"The Court, considering arguments based on the nature of allegiance, majesty, conquest, natural reason, and an unalterable law of nature, held that Calvin was not an alien..."

"There is found in the law four kinds of ligeances: the first is, ligeantia naturalis, absoluta, pura, et indefinita,42 and this originally is due by nature and birthright, and is called alta ligeantia42a and he that oweth this is called subditus natus."

"Calvin the Plaintiff naturalized by procreation and birth right..."

"There be regulary (unlesse it be in special cases) three incidents to a subject born
1. That the parents be under the actual obedience of the king.
2. That the place of his birth be within the king’s dominion.
And 3. the time of his birth is chiefly to be considered.."

"The place is observable, but so as many times ligeance or obedience without any place within the king’s dominions may make a subject born, but any place within the king’s dominions may make a subject born, but any place within the king’s dominions without obedience can never produce a natural subject."

Note that it was the ligeance and obedience of the parents which Coke was referring to.

It has always been about the allegiance and obedience of the father, when determining the allegiance of his children.

Although it is reasonable that the US legislators (1795) added native-birth to "natural born" as an extra measure aimed at achieving highest possible allegiance for the office of POTUS.

MichaelN said...

Coke - Calvin's case (1600)

"For the Laws:

1. That ligeance, or obedience of the subject to the Sovereign, is due by the Law of nature:

2. That this Law of nature is part of the Laws of England:

3. That the Law of nature was before any judicial or municipal Law in the world:

4. That the Law of nature is immutable and cannot be changed....

....There is found in the law four kinds of ligeances: the first is, ligeantia naturalis, absoluta, pura, et indefinita,42 and this originally is due by nature and birthright, and is called alta ligeantia42a and he that oweth this is called subditus natus."

Unknown said...

Mario Apuzzo, Esq. wrote:
"Justice Gray is wrong in what he said."

He said that under, "MR. JUSTICE GRAY, after stating the case, delivered the opinion of the court." United States v. Wong Kim Ark, 169 U.S. 649 (1898). Mr. Apuzzo, you have the right to disagree with the United States Supreme Court, but in doing so you fall to your own criticism. "You do not give arguments that are based on what the law is, but rather on what you think the law ought to be."

Mario Apuzzo, Esq. said...

Unknown,

First, you know darn well that the issue is what is the definition of a “natural born Citizen.” I have demonstrated what the history and law is regarding defining a “natural born Citizen,” not what is ought to be. You are deceitful in not telling us what my criticism is of Justice Gray and that my criticism does not involve any definition of a “natural born Citizen.” You want to give the appearance that somehow he gave an opinion on what the definition of a “natural born Citizen” is and that I maintain that he is wrong about that definition. Again, I have always maintained that Justice Gray did not define a “natural-born citizen” any differently than how Minor v. Happersett defined one.

Second, I have also demonstrated that, in connection to Justice Gray defining a “citizen of the United States” at birth under the Fourteenth Amendment (not to be conflated and confounded with an Artile II “natural born Citizen”) through the aid of the English common law, history and law also show that Justice Gray erred in concluding that the "same rule" (the English common law jus soli rule) prevailed in the United States on the national level after the Constitution was adopted. And by the way, the United States Government, Chief Justice Fuller, and Justice Harlan said the same thing in 1898 that I say about Justice Gray's jus soli argument.

Third, since you think that Justice Gray is correct on his “same rule” argument, provide for us here all of Justice Gray's and your legal sources which show that the English common law jus soli rule continued to have application on the national level (not at the individual states level) after the Constitution was adopted. Please do show us how the English common law jus soli rule became and continued to be national law after the Constitution was adopted and right down to the time that Justice Gray wrote his opinion in 1898.

Unknown said...

I seemed to have missed wong kim ark being ruled a nbc, from all i have read he was a citizen of the us. If chinese exclusion act was still in effect then the sc overstepped because the US Constitution gives Congress powers of naturalization not the SC. I noticed the minor court showed great respect to our Framers and US Constitution even though i got the impression they wanted to grant suffrage to Virginia minor but realized the US C at the time did not give any citizen the right to vote and as mario says only we the people can amend it. I think if Framers were alive today they would want potential presidents to pass background checks and security clearances and the results would be known by the public. Article 2 is being ignored and needs to be strengthened anyways. A regular fbi employee has to pass background checks and so should future presidents

MichaelN said...

Mario Apuzzo, Esq. said....

"Justice Gray erred in concluding that the "same rule" (the English common law jus soli rule) prevailed in the United States on the national level after the Constitution was adopted. And by the way, the United States Government, Chief Justice Fuller, and Justice Harlan said the same thing in 1898 that I say about Justice Gray's jus soli argument."

I wonder if Gray was deliberately leaving himself an out; ambiguity makes it so that it is not clear whether Gray meant that, the "same rule" was still practiced by some states of the union, i..e. "in the United States afterwards" does not necessarily mean BY the United States.

Gray not necessarily referring to US national rules.

Important the part when Gray quotes Coke, pointing to allegiance as the deciding factor in establishing "natural born subject" status.

A close reading of Coke's report of Calvin's case reveals that Coke was speaking of the allegiance of the father (as a subject), of a native-born child and that it was this parental allegiance which determined the natural born subject status of the child.

English law or rules have never been such that native-birth sufficed to make a natural born subject; it has always been about the allegiance of the father, who, in England, is a subject of the reigning sovereign, in whose English realm or dominion the alien is visiting, by mere virtue of the alien being present in that realm.

Simply, a friendly alien visitor to 17th century England, became a subject by local allegiance, immediately upon setting foot in the dominion of English sovereign

The US doesn't follow this English rule, where friendly aliens are automatically US citizens, just because of their visiting the US..... aliens must be naturalized to be US citizens.

So, IF the US did rely on the English law, then for a US native-born child to be a "natural born citizen", that child would have to be born under the allegiance of a US citizen father. (actually parents)

Lord Coke - Calvin's case...

"There be regulary (unlesse it be in special cases) three incidents to a subject born.

1. That the parents be under the actual obedience of the king.

2. That the place of his birth be within the king’s dominion.

And 3. the time of his birth is chiefly to be considered;"

Anonymous said...

MichaelN;
Coke - Calvin's case (1600) The four absolute statements made "For the Laws..." is based on a denial of natural rights, as revealed in the first one: "1. That ligeance, or obedience of the subject to the Sovereign, is due by the Law of nature."
You should clear all the cobwebs out of your mind regarding old English doctrine and dogma such as allegiance and obedience. You won't come to the knowledge of the truth until you read something like the exposition that I posted yesterday to my blog, titled: "The Truth about Allegiance & Natural Citizenship; Allegiance: Bastard Child of Royal Despots" The first paragraph begins with:
Some folks with a strong belief in strict national security measures have fallen under the persuasive allure of an ancient imperial dogma of deceit, the doctrine of dictators, embracing and espousing the notion by which royal despots persuaded the gullible that they had the right to rule over them as their lord and master, -their absolute sovereign for life, -the one to whom they "owed" allegiance, loyalty and obedience due to the happenstances that their mother was within the boundaries of the monarch's land when she delivered them from the womb. I speak of the Divine Right of Kings, -that pseudo scripture-based doctrine invented by the religious sycophants of the king in order to justify his power and reign by beknighting his sovereignty with the primatur of Divine authority, -which he supposedly was endowed with by He who made him the head of Church & State.

It goes on to explain many things that have never come to your mind, including the fact that in America allegiance does not exist, nor does it exist in natural law or nature. I explain why, and what stands in its place. I hope you will read it and learn from it. It reveals many things that have never been explained or written before. http://h2ooflife.wordpress.com/2013/04/12/allegiance/
Adrien Nash

Anonymous said...

It seems that Justice Gray was either a crackpot or a liar. Either he read some bogus pseudo-history of American common law and believed it hook, line, and sinker, or he made the whole thing up. I suspect the later.

Today I spent about 6 hours working on something that I'll put online on or just before the anniversary of the release of the bogus PDF birth certificate (the 27th) That occasion deserves some expression of righteous indignation. This is page 1 of 3:

America -& The Law of Nature
in irreducible reduction

Fourteen Truths About Life, Humans, and Belonging

1. Only Life can produce Life. Life can never be produced by non-Life.

2. All life-forms follow the universal pattern of Uniformity.

3. All off-spring are universally the same life-form as their parents .

4. Children with parents of identical origins are born with the nature of their parents.

4a. Asian parents produce only Asian children and Negro parents produce only Negro children regardless of where they are born.
4b. Native Hawaiians parents produce only Hawaiian children and Jewish parents produce only Jewish children regardless of where they are born;
4c. Germans produce only German children and Americans produce only American children regardless of where they are born.
5. Race, Ethnicity, and Nationality are elements passed from parents to children.

6. Children do not "possess" nor "acquire" their innate character. It is innately what they are.

7. Such children are not born "with" membership in their parents' race, ethnicity, and country, nor "with" citizenship in their parents' nation. Rather, they are born *as* members and *as* citizens by nature. It is an inherent character.

8. Innate character (such as being human, being an earthling, and being a natural member of one's parents' group) is beyond the ability, or the legitimate authority of government to alter.

9. Natural membership and natural citizenship, like the freedom to think and talk, are a fundamental element of the nature of human life, and being such, are unalienable natural rights.

10. Natural citizens are not created by the authority of government because the government's authority is created by natural citizens, and their national membership exists even before the government is created.

11. All citizenship which is not natural in nature is legal in nature.

12. Legal citizens are created by the permission of government. Moral and legitimate government is created by the permission of natural citizens.

13. The American Constitution, as written, grants citizenship to no one, but recognizes that all citizenship is not natural. It recognizes the worth of individuals possessing only legal citizenship and allows them to ascend to every legislative, judicial, and executive position in the nation, -with only two exceptions.

14. No American except a natural born American is allowed to occupy the position that wields the power of the Commander-in-Chief of all Military and Federal forces (including all nuclear weapons), -the office of the President of the United State. All legal citizens are forbidden from assuming that office, and so the Vice-President must also be a natural born citizen.

Feel free to share it. Adrien Nash

Carlyle said...

@ dick head

in re

"if Framers were alive today they would want potential presidents to pass background checks and security clearances and the results would be known by the public"

------------------------

I believe that is unquestionably true - simply by common sense, if nothing else. However, our problem is that 99.999% (or some other huge percentage) of the people believe this has been done. Our continual plague is "I'm sure it is OK or someone would have told us".

I have in fact meet many staunch Obama supporters who mock my skepticism because the believe strongly that FBI or CIA necessarily vetted Obama somewhere along the way. For instance, "Even before he was president, only president elect, he was included in deep security briefings. Are you so insane as to believe that anyone would be let that near National Security secrets without being thoroughly backgrounded?"

Officially the alphabet agencies will neither confirm nor deny what they do or don't do in regards presidential candidates (and the MSM is afraid to ask pointed questions). They seem to feel it is important that it remain a political question. In the meantime, the politicians won't touch it. They prefer to rely on the (false!) meme that "of course all is well".

Such is the depth and breadth of our current situation.

Unknown said...

Mario Apuzzo, Esq. wrote:
"First, you know darn well that the issue is what is the definition of a 'natural born Citizen.' I have demonstrated what the history and law is regarding defining a 'natural born Citizen,' not what is ought to be. You are deceitful in not telling us what my criticism is of Justice Gray and that my criticism does not involve any definition of a 'natural born Citizen.'"

'Tis you being deceitful. You go down tangents, then act like I changed the subject when I refute you on them.

Furthermore, your answer on Wong's use of the English common law to define the term at issue was very much the same. When you represented Mr. Purpura and Mr. Moran before an administrative law judge in the great state of New Jersey, the Court quoted from Wong and put to you the question: "Doesn't that say that English common law -- whatever that was, whatever the definitions under English common law were -- that that was what was adopted in the Constitution?"

You responded: "With all due respect to the United States Supreme Court, and to Justice Grey, there's no support for what he says." Mr. Apuzzo, that is a losing argument. The authority of the U.S. Supreme Court derives directly from the Constitution, not from how well anyone thinks other sources support the Court's conclusions.


Mario Apuzzo, Esq. wrote:
"Second, I have also demonstrated that, in connection to Justice Gray defining a 'citizen of the United States' at birth under the Fourteenth Amendment (not to be conflated and confounded with an Artile II 'natural born Citizen') through the aid of the English common law, history and law also show that Justice Gray erred in concluding [...]"

There you go. The U.S. Supreme Court is the highest authority in American common law. No matter how convincing you believe your demonstrations to be, the law is what the Supreme Court decided, not what you think they should have decided. Wong was law when Obama, Jindal, Rubio, and Cruz were born, it was law when Obama was elected and re-elected, and it is law today.

Mario Apuzzo, Esq. said...

Unknown,

You continue with your deceitful presentation of what the debate is, failing to tell us that my argument is that you and ALJ Masin in New Jersey conflate and confound a “natural born Citizen” under American national common law with a “citizen of the United States” at birth under the Fourteenth Amendment.

When I told ALJ Masin in New Jersey that I did not agree with Justice Gray, it was because the judge said that Wong Kim Ark established that the English common law “was adopted in the Constitution.” There simply is no historical or legal support for what Justice Gray and Judge Masin said. The Constitution never adopted any English common law. Rather, it adopted as national law the “Constitution, the Laws of the United States, and Treaties.” Article III. The Constitution expressly made the law of nations (see Article 1, Section 8, Clause 10) also part of Article III’s “Laws of the United States.” But the Constitution, notwithstanding the Bill of Rights, never did the same with the English common law. See the brilliant discussion of this subject by St. George Tucker in his Volume 1 of his Commentaries, at Note E (Tucker explains how the states continued to selectively use the English common law. But then he understands that whether that English common law was also to be applied on the national level was a completely different concern and issue. He goes through the Constitution, analyzing the legislative, executive, and judicial branches of government, looking for the English common law as providing rules of decision and jurisdiction for our government and found none. That would necessarily include defining eligibility and "natural born Citizen" for the executive branch). Furthermore, the English common law was selectively adopted by most of the states and informed on state citizenship. What the states did and their form of state citizenship never did become national citizenship. Congress provided the rules of national citizenship in the Naturalization Acts of 1790, 1795, 1802, and 1855 and the Civil Rights Act of 1866, and eventually in the Fourteenth Amendment. None of those laws, despite Justice Gray’s erroneous application of English common law and states common law, derived their meaning from the English common law or state common law.

We do as you say have as a binding precedent the case of U.S. Supreme Court case of Wong Kim Ark. But what you fail at is not understanding for what it is a precedent. Justice Gray did not give us a definition of a “natural born Citizen” any different from what Minor gave us. He also erred in using the English common law and state common law rules on state citizenship to form an opinion of what the nation’s national rule had been on matters of citizenship. That English common law and state common law only defined state citizenship, not national citizenship. In addition to the American national common law rule that defined an Article II “natural born Citizen,” the nation had already passed the Naturalization Acts of 1790, 1795, 1802, and 1855 and the Civil Rights Act of 1866, all in which Congress had expressed the national rule on citizenship. Justice Gray simply ignored these national laws and reverted to the colonial English common law and state common law to find that Wong was born “subject to the jurisdiction” of the United States which then allowed him to find that he was a “citizen of the United States” at birth under the Fourteenth Amendment. What this all means is that Minor v. Happersett is the U.S. Supreme Court precedent that defines an Article II “natural born Citizen” under American national common law and that Wong Kim Ark is the precedent, whether right or wrong, that defines a “citizen of the United States” at birth under the Fourteenth Amendment.

Unknown said...

I bought Captain Barnetts book and she says congress and president, vp do not recieve security clearances and background checks, only regular employees would have to. The cia says congress does not recieve security clearances either, they only have to be elected. This was her area of expertise in army and she listed the many reasons why obama would have no chance to pass one not the least of which is the guy is a serial liar, hung around with subversives like ayers, dohrn, fmd etc and has 2 forgerys and a fake social. Anyways this leaves the US wide open to our enemys gaining power and unfortunately this has already happened.

Unknown said...

The early nat acts do not specify if children of aliens born in us were citizens even though it says children of duly naturalized aliens became citizens when alien parent naturalized. I think back in late 1700s the only ones granted automatic citizenship were children of american citizens born in us

Mario Apuzzo, Esq. said...

dh,

“Publius” (probably James Madison who was President then) on October 7, 1811, commenting and applying the Naturalization Act of 1802 (which was the same as the Naturalization Act of 1790 and 1795 in the particular at issue) in The Alexandria Herald, concerning the “Case of James McClure,” stated:

“Mr. Rodman hints, that it would have been sufficient for James McClure to have been born in the United States—he is mistaken. The law of the United States recognizes no such claim. The law of Virginia, of 1792, does—for, “all free persons born within the territory of this commonwealth,” is deemed a citizen. The law of Virginia considers him as a son of the soil. An alien, as well as a citizen, may beget a citizen, but the U. States’ act does not go so far. A man must be naturalized to make his children such.”

Publius, in 1811, living when the acts were passed by Congress, would know what Congress intended when it passed the naturalization acts. In that connection, Publius told us that it did not matter where a child was born. Wherever a child was born, if the child’s parents were aliens, the child was alien born and in need of naturalization. Regardless of where the child was born, the child’s parents had to naturalize in order to make their children citizens. The historical record shows that Secretary of State, James Monroe, who was serving the James Madison Administration, eventually declared McClure alien born. He then ruled that he became a “Citizen of the United States,” not because he was born in South Carolina on April 21, 1785, but because a few months after he was born, his British father naturalized as a “citizen of the United States.”

Also, it was James Madison and his Congressional committee who amended the Naturalization Act of 1790 by, among other things, removing “shall be considered as natural born citizens” and replacing that language with “shall be considered as citizens of the United States.”

I think that it is eminently reasonable to take the word of the James Madison’s Administration in 1811 that the early naturalization acts applied to children born in the United States and that those acts treated children born in the United States to alien parents as alien born and in need of naturalization. American national common law defined who could be an Article II “natural born Citizen.” Congress’s naturalization acts were our national statutory law that defined who could be a “citizen of the United States,” at birth and after birth, a law that did not follow the English common law or the common law of the states.

For more information on the James McClure case, see my brief filed in the Kerchner and Laudenslager v. Obama Ballot Challenge in the Commonwealth Court of Pennsylvania, accessed at http://www.scribd.com/doc/83104811/Kerchner-Laudenslager-v-Obama-Ballot-Challenge-Brief-on-Behalf-of-Objectors-Filed-28Feb2012 .

Note how Publius explained that there was a significant difference between national law and state law and how those two different laws defined citizenship, with the former defining national citizenship and the latter defining state citizenship. What Justice Gray did in Wong Kim Ark was treat the English common law and state common law as though it were our national law and concluded that the English common law jus soli rule survived the American Revolution and adoption of the Constitution. This was and remains to be a constitutional error of monumental proportions.

MichaelN said...

Mario Apuzzo, Esq. said....

"What Justice Gray did in Wong Kim Ark was treat the English common law and state common law as though it were our national law and concluded that the English common law jus soli rule survived the American Revolution and adoption of the Constitution. This was and remains to be a constitutional error of monumental proportions."

Seems like it was a common practice of Gray to get it wrong and misrepresent the view of the SCOTUS.

"Gray is well known for his decision in Pollock v. Farmers' Loan & Trust Co.

This case was heard twice, though only the second hearing resulted in a decision; the justices, feeling that the opinions written had not adequately explained their view of the situation (the case was about the constitutionality of a national income tax), wished to rehear the case.

After the first hearing, Gray wrote that he sided with the defendant (Farmer's Loan & Trust), arguing that the tax was indeed constitutional. He was in the minority, however.

After the second hearing, Gray changed his stance, joining with the majority in favor of the plaintiff. He chose not to write a dissenting or concurring opinion, in either hearing."


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horace_Gray

Unknown said...

The early acts also talk about only granting citizenship to people with high morals who support US Constitution so if alien father was a criminal then it would be hard for me to believe the child of such aliens would automatically be granted citizenship by virtue of us birth. I realize things are more lax today but our Fed govt back then was trying to protect our country and it would make sense that alien children would have to earn their citizenship as adults. I read Publius in 1811 and it probably was madison writing. I am struck at how highly educated, moral, wise and reasonable the Founders were compared to what we have in power today. I suspect God played a real part in their life

Anonymous said...

Mario wrote: " What Justice Gray did in Wong Kim Ark was...and remains to be a constitutional error of monumental proportions."
Which forever begs the question of whether or not it was a monumental error of stupidity or of deceit, -not being an actual error but a lie.

Mario is correct but simultaneously incorrect due to the ambiguity of this statement: " Congress’s naturalization acts were our national statutory law that defined who could be a “citizen of the United States,” at birth and after birth,"
What he should have said for clarity is: "...that define which *aliens* could become or be considered a citizen of the United States." No naturalization act deals with nor has power over natural citizens, only foreigners and their children.

Anonymous said...

"Publius told us that it did not matter where a child was born."

President Madison understood the principle of natural law by which children of Englishmen, though American born, were natural born Englishmen by patrilineal descent, proven further by this:
"...eventually declared McClure alien born. He then ruled that he became a “Citizen of the United States,” not because he was born in South Carolina...but because a few months after he was born, his British father naturalized as a “citizen of the United States.”
He went from being a natural English born subject to being an American via derivative citizenship. Whatever the father is, so is also the son. In nature paternity is everything. Location is an element of law, not nature; -an element of legal citizenship, not natural citizenship.

Anonymous said...

The truth about the 1790 Nat. Act: " ...and thereupon such person shall be *considered as* a Citizen of the United States. And the children of such person so naturalized,...shall also be *considered as* citizens of the United States."
Notice the language: "considered as citizens of the U.S.", which means that they *ARE* citizens of the United States. Their citizenship is not a fiction of law. It is real.

Similarly: "And 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:"
Considered as natural born citizens meant that they in fact actually were natural born citizens, and not a fiction of law, -pseudo natural born citizens.

There was only one reason to declare them citizens and that was as an order to all port authorities and magistrates that they were never to treat their fellow Americans as aliens.
Bear in mind also, that foreign women who married American men could become American citizens before ever stepping foot on American soil. They would enter the country as new Americans even though they were also foreigners. Why would they be allowed in why?

Because of the authority of Congress and the declarations made either by its Act or by federal officers who controlled federal policy. Such authority was what was being exercised by those declarations.
But in adding the words "natural born" they went a big step further, and there is not explanation of earth for having done so other than the one that I presented previously. Silence should not be misconstrued as disagreement because disagreement is impossible without an alternate explanation, and there is none.
Congress wanted the world to know that place of birth was irrelevant as long as an American son lived in his country for 14 years. Then, if 35 years of age, he would qualify to be President. Thus the Paris-born hypothetical or real son of T. Jefferson, and the London born hypothetical or real son of J. Adams were eligible to be President just like their fathers. No real-world reason on earth could justify denying them their birthright.

Anonymous said...

dick head wrote: "if an alien father was a criminal then it would be hard for me to believe the child of such aliens would automatically be granted citizenship by virtue of us birth. I am struck at how highly educated, moral, wise..the Founders were."

I'll bet that no one who was illiterate would have applied for citizenship, and that it wasn't granted to one who was. Being informed and being able to read the Constitution and the Bible are primary elements in maintaining public morality and an honest free republic, though there were probably exceptions, as well as corrupt highly literate people (Federalists who passed the Alien & Sedition Acts).

Anonymous said...

Naturalization Act 1795: "Sec 3. And be it further enacted, that the children of persons duly naturalized,...and the children of citizens of the United States, born out of the limits and jurisdiction of the United States, *shall be considered as citizens* of the United States:"

"Considered as" is direct at the persons assigned the posts of doing the considering. Every entry port officer would ask himself; "Is this person or child from abroad an American or an alien? If they are an American do I care at all what kind of citizen they are? Why should I, -ingress into the country has nothing to do with Presidential elections. I don't care if they are a naturalized citizen or a natural born citizen. It's all the same when it comes to being allowed in. I only care whether or not they are a citizen. Congress has told me that they are. That's all I need to know." And so that is all that they were told when it was rewritten.

Anonymous said...

"Justice Gray...concluded that the English common law jus soli rule survived the American Revolution and adoption of the Constitution."

It's pretty likely that he was from a state, perhaps Virginia, which naturalized children of its immigrants at birth, making them sons of Virginia via jus soli. His mind may have been so suffused with jus soli from his whole life background that he just presumed it was the same else where.

My sister recently handed me a fingernail clipper when I asked for one but it was curved outward instead of inward. I was astonished that such a thing existed, and she was surprised to hear that I'd never seen such a thing in my life, while she didn't know there was any other kind! And she's live 60 years. We presume things because of our experience or lack thereof, -our assumptions coloring our conclusions.

Now I'm done, no going to bed at 8:30 AM tonight.

Carlyle said...

@dickhead

Yes, it is absolutely true that the highest ranking elected officials DO NOT get security clearances or backgrounded. The problem is that a huge majority of the people do not know this. And most of them, when told, do not believe it. They find it irrational and non-credible that the highest officials, especially the ones with access to and control of the MOST secrets - have had no such vetting. They find it incomprehensible.

It would do our cause a great good if this became generally known and believed. The most common argument against The Obama being a foreign agent, or even a domestic enemy, is that surely he was thoroughly checked out. Therefore we are just being sore losers and even racist.

I can guarantee you that if The Truth were known, a sufficient majority of the American people would "have a heart attack" and there would be a great hue and cry for his dismissal, or worse.

It is this lie (disinformation) that is the primary foundation of this pretend presidency.

Mario Apuzzo, Esq. said...

H2ooflife, Stranger, A.R. Nash (all the same person),

I of III

You argue that when Congress defined a “citizen of the United States,” it could also have been defining a “natural born Citizen.” With respect to the Fourteenth Amendment, this is the same grave constitutional error committed by the lower courts in Ankeny v. Governor of Indiana, Tisdale v. Obama, Fair v. Obama (appeal pending), Farrar v. Obama, Galasso v. Obama , Jackson v. Obama , Paige v. Obama (appeal pending), Purpura et al v. Obama , Strunk v. NY State Board of Elections (appeal pending), and Voeltz v. Obama . They all simply assume without demonstrating with any evidence that a “natural born Citizen” is subsumed and defined within a Fourteenth Amendment “citizen of the United States.” I do not agree with this thesis on three grounds, i.e., constitutional text and structure, intent, and definition.

First, let us address constitutional text and structure. Your argument fails from a textual and structural standpoint. Any analysis of the classes of U.S. “citizens” that exist in the United States must start with the text and structure of the Constitution. The Constitution recognizes only two classes of such “citizens,” the “natural born Citizens” and the “Citizens of the United States.” In Article I and II, the Constitution treats “Citizens of the United States” as not being “natural born Citizens.” In other words, it treats them as alien born. For example, when it comes to Representatives and Senators, Article I provides that they must be at least “Citizens of the United States” for seven and nine years, respectively. Clearly, these “Citizens of the United States” were alien born. Then in Article II, it does not provide: “No person except a Citizen of the United States at birth, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President.” Rather, Article II uses the clause “natural born Citizen” to convey the message that future presidents cannot be alien born. The conclusion that we can reasonably draw from this textual and structural analysis is that the clause “natural born Citizen” has a meaning that is separate and distinct from a “citizen of the United States.” This distinction is explained in my second and third point.

Second, let us consider intent. The Framers specifically gave us two clauses, “natural born Citizen” and “Citizen of the United States,” with only the former being eligible to be President in the future. By tying the former only to the unique constitutional civil and military, singular and all-powerful offices of the President and Commander in Chief and his or her eligibility for those offices, the Framers’ intent was to give that class of citizenship the highest order in American society. If a “natural born Citizen” was included in the definition of a “citizen of the United States,” the Framers would have somehow communicated that through the Constitution’s text or structure or through some outside document or decision. Also, when early Congress, which included many Founders and Framers, meant to define a “natural born citizen,” it told us so (the Naturalization Act of 1790, see below). When it meant to define a “citizen of the United States,” it also told us that (the Naturalization Act of 1795, later such acts, the Civil Rights Act of 1866, and the Fourteenth Amendment, see below). So, Congress knew the difference between the two clauses and kept them separate from each other. Congress had an opportunity to specifically define a “natural born citizen” through the Fourteenth Amendment wherein it specifically addressed citizenship by birth in the United States. It chose not to. Nor is there any evidence that the amendment repealed by implication Article II’s natural born Citizen” clause or its American national common law definition of the clause.

Continued . . .

Mario Apuzzo, Esq. said...

II of III

Third, your argument also fails from a definitional standpoint. Let us now consider who were the persons who the Framers accepted as not being alien born when they wrote the Constitution and provided for the eligibility standards for the national office of President of the United States and Commander in Chief of the Military. First, the Framers, needing uniformity for the entire nation and the world, would have used a law accepted by the civilized nations of the word and which they themselves accepted as part of U.S. national law to define that class of citizen. That law did not exist in the English common law, any constitution, or act of Congress. The historical record and case law demonstrates that that law was the law of nations which they saw as coming from “the Law of Nature and of Nature’s God.” The Declaration of Independence. The Founders and Framers incorporated that law into American national common law. They also viewed it as immutable and as being part of the supreme law of the land. Hence, the Framers put the definition of a “natural born Citizen” beyond the reach of Congress’s naturalization powers.

The only U.S. “citizens” that existed under that American national common law were those born in the country to parents who were its “citizens” at the moment of the child’s birth. Minor v. Happersett (1875) . In Minor, the unanimous U.S. Supreme Court paraphrased the definition of a “natural-born citizen” from Emer de Vattel, The Law of Nations, Section 212 (London 1797) (1st ed. Neuchatel 1758) and explained that “[a]t 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.” As Minor explained, these person were not only “citizens” like their parents, but they were also the “natives” or “natural-born citizens.” As we can see from how it defined at common law a “citizen” and a “natural-born citizen,” Minor further explained that all the rest of the people in the United States or the world were at the moment of their birth “aliens or foreigners.”

Critically important to arriving at the correct definition of a “natural born Citizen,” we can also easily see that Minor did not refer to the English common law or that of any individual state which adopted that law when defining a “natural-born citizen,” for that law automatically naturalized at birth children who were born in the King’s dominion to alien parents who were neither foreign diplomats nor military invaders, treating these children as English “natural born subjects.”

Minor also explained that the Framers provided in the Constitution for the making of additional “citizens” in addition to the “natural-born citizens.” While the Constitution did not give Congress any power to make “natural-born citizens,” it did give it power to naturalize alien born persons to become U.S. “citizens” or as we have seen what the Constitution calls “Citizens of the United States.” It used that power, passing statutes such as the Naturalization Acts of 1790, 1795, 1802, 1855, and all the more modern ones. With these statutes, Congress made additional U.S. “citizens.” Congress also made more U.S. “citizens” by way of treaties. Congress, through its naturalization powers, made these persons U.S. “citizens” at birth or after birth, depending on their birth circumstances. These were, however, naturalized U.S. “citizens,” not “natural-born citizens.”

Continued . . .

Mario Apuzzo, Esq. said...

III of III

In its naturalization laws, Congress never considered place of birth sufficient to give any person the status of a U.S. “citizen” at birth or after birth. On the other hand, it did consider birth to “citizen” parents a controlling factor (depending on the time period, one or two U.S. “citizen” parents or the U.S. “citizen” father alone controlled) which gave to persons born out of the United States the status of being a U.S. “citizen” at birth. But again, regardless of what Congress called these foreign-born U.S. “citizens,” not satisfying the American national common law definition of a “natural-born citizen,” they were still alien born but naturalized, and could therefore not be “natural-born citizens.” They were by legal fiction (“naturalization”) what Congress decided to call them. So, in 1790, Congress said that such persons “shall be considered as natural born citizens.” But Congress only has the power to naturalize the alien born, and so it could not make “natural-born citizens.” Hence, in 1795, with the work of Representative James Madison and his Congressional committee, Congress corrected itself and said that those same persons “shall be considered as citizens of the United States.”

Congress never again used the clause “natural born Citizen” in any of its naturalization acts. Congress also did not use the “natural born Citizen” clause in the Civil Rights Act of 1866 or the Fourteenth Amendment. Those laws do not use the American national common law definition of a “natural born Citizen” and textually only define a “Citizen of the United States,” not a “natural born Citizen.” U.S. v. Wong Kim Ark (1898) interpreted and applied the Fourteenth Amendment, and other than just confirming Minor’s definition of the clause, not the “natural born Citizen” clause. Hence, the “natural born Citizen” clause has never been changed in definition since the Founding and writing of the Constitution. That definition has always been and continues to be today a child born in a country to parents who were its “citizens” at the moment of the child’s birth. This means that any person born in the United States to one or two alien parents, is a “citizen of the United States” at birth under the Fourteenth Amendment, but not a “natural born Citizen” under American national common law. This also means that any person born out of the United States to one or two U.S. “citizen” parents is a “citizen of the United States” under an Act of Congress, but not a “natural born Citizen” under that same American national common law. Finally, a person born out of the United States to U.S. “citizen” parents serving the national defense of the United States (John McCain) is reputed born in the country and therefore a “natural born Citizen.”

Anonymous said...

Alexander Hamilton’s draft for the Constitution suggests in
Article IX, Section 1 that: "No person shall be eligible to the office of President of the United States unless he be now a Citizen of one of the States, or hereafter be born a Citizen of the United States."
(Works of Alexander Hamilton: Miscellanies, 1774-1789, page 407).

(~5 weeks later) - John Jay writes to General Washington: "...to declare expressly that the Commander in Chief of the American army shall not be given to nor devolve on, any but a natural born Citizen."

Hamilton's concern was that only residents of the States who *now* (pre-Constitution) are citizens be allowed to hold the reins of U.S. military power, and in the future, after adoption, only those "born a citizen" of the U.S. be eligible.

John Jay's concerns went to a deeper level, recognizing that some states naturalized at birth sons of aliens who could be raised to hold secret devotion to their father's homeland. And so he split the hair of those "born a citizen" and advocated only accepting those who were born as a *natural* citizen, -not simply born as a citizen.
"Natural" does not modify the adjective "born". It modifies the noun "citizen".

A born citizen can be one naturalized at birth, but a natural citizen is not naturalized but is natural. A citizen by nature, -by the political nature inherited from his father.

Unknown said...

I read some of the Venus and i noticed Chief Justice Marshall citing Gronitz and Vattel as part of the law of nations. He referred to both of them in his writings on that case. I do not have .01 of the knowledge that Judge Waite and Judge Marshall would have about the law of nations and i find it hard to believe that they did not what they were talking about in venus and minor. I have also heard there was no debate during convention of what a NBC was so i highly doubt there were 30 different ways to be born one as the obots claim. Gronitz, vattel and our Framers were of the highest caliber and i wouldve liked to have heard John Marshall give lectures on the law of nations. He is still considered the best Chief Justice in nations history

Anonymous said...

In America, as well as elsewhere, nationality was a status passed from the head of the household to the children or child. That was always the father unless he had died during the pregnancy of the mother-to-be, or had never existed as spouse. Then the mother's nationality was passed to her children.

American fathers produced American children wherever they and their wife happened to be visiting or in residence, -both inside and outside of America's boundaries, -in Toledo or Timbuktu , -in Cincinnati or Singapore, -in Boston or Bangkok, or on a ship at sea.
Congress has no constitutional authority over the citizenship of natural citizens no matter where they're born. It's only role is to insure that they *are* natural citizens and not lying foreigners who want to come to America but don't qualify.
Any idea that any language in any naturalization statute naturalizes American children is false and baseless, as well as unconstitutional if it did or does exist.
Nowhere in any American legal document of governance is there any language that labels the children of Americans as being foreigners nor aliens in need of naturalization. Such language would never have entered the minds of those who embraced the principle and authority of natural law.

Not since life first appeared on earth has the location of a mother before, during, or after delivery determined the nature of her child. It is what its parents are, period. Add anything to it and you are making a huge error, and violating the principle of natural law.
Citizens give birth to citizens. Foreigners give birth to foreigners.
Foreigners give birth to citizens not by natural law but by human law.
Citizens give birth to foreigners by no law of man or nature.
Any idea that thinks otherwise is false and is based on misconstruing the meaning of some text and ignoring the primacy of natural law.
There is no disputing these truths because there is alternative reality on which a dispute could be based. There is only one reality, and one principle of natural law. And the founders knew it, and held it as inviolable, cognizant that they did not create nor could they alter the laws of nature.

The marriage of jus soli with jus sanguinis produces something that conforms to nothing, and which has never existed in any society that followed natural law.

Now I'm done. I've shared the truth. Recognize it, or reject it, it's up to you. But recognize that the natural law view alone fully de-legitimizes Barack Obama's presidency.
The combo view contributes nothing to that illegitimacy since his place of birth has yet to be established, although the illegitimacy of his fraudulent birth certificates is apparent.

Mario Apuzzo, Esq. said...

H2ooflife, Stranger, A.R. Nash (all the same person),

I of II

You said: "‘Natural’ does not modify the adjective ‘born.’ It modifies the noun ‘citizen.’” I disagree. Addressing your point also allows me to comment on the central thesis of Jack Maskell of CRS Memo fame. Jack Maskell and some lower courts have adopted the thesis that any citizen “at birth” or “from birth” is a “natural born Citizen.” This argument can be demonstrated to be wrong.

Chief Justice John Marshall in Marbury v. Madison, 1 Cranch 163 (1803) long ago explained that when interpreting the Constitution, we are to give meaning and value to every word written. To ignore words so written in the Constitution is “inadmissible.” So, the first error that Maskell and those who follow him make is that they ignore the existence and meaning of the word “natural,” even though “natural” is a critical part of the “natural born Citizen” constitutional clause. Doing so violates the “natural born Citizen” clause, which is a word of art, an idiom, a unitary clause, and brings Maskell and the lower courts to an incorrect conclusion as to its meaning. Now let us explore just how they come to the wrong meaning of a “natural born Citizen” by ignoring the word “natural.”

We know that for presidential eligibility, Alexander Hamilton’s “born citizen” was either not advanced or not accepted, for the Founders and Framers wanted more than just “born citizen.” Hence, they accepted “natural born Citizen.” So, Article II, Section 1, Clause 5 tells us that the only type of “born citizen” that is eligible to be President is a “natural born Citizen.” But we may ask why is the word “natural” so important and what does it mean when added to qualify the phrase “born Citizen?”

Let us first consider a textual analysis. As to the importance of the word “natural,” notice that the Framers in Article II did not hyphenate “natural-born,” which by doing so would have put the emphasis on a type of “Citizen,” which is what you advocate. Rather, with no hyphen, the emphasis is on none of the words, and the clause is to be read as one unitary clause. So, “born Citizen” becomes as important as “Citizen” and “natural born Citizen” tells us that we are to have a certain type of “born Citizen,” i.e., a “natural” one.

Let us now consider a logical analysis. Consider these parameters:

“Citizen” is a type of person.

“Born citizen” is a type of "citizen."

“Natural born citizen” is a type of “born citizen.”

Conclusion: We can readily see that the progression is “person,” to “born citizen,” to “natural born citizen,” with the latter being of the highest order. “Natural” goes to explain how a “born citizen” is to come into being. That presupposes that one is already a “born citizen” and that one must do more than just be a “born citizen.” If one is to be a “born citizen” by a certain way, then there must be a specific means by which one is to become a “born citizen.” Hence, the word “natural” tells us how the “born citizen” is to come into being, which means that “natural” modifies “born” and “born citizen”, not just “citizen” as you contend. So, there are different types of “born citizens.”

Now let us consider whether the word “natural” added any specific definition to the phrase “born Citizen.” To do this we must consider what the word “natural” meant for the Founders and Framers when added to qualify a “born Citizen.” By ignoring “natural,” Maskell and his followers free a “natural born citizen” from the specific constitutional means by which a “natural born citizen” takes on his or her birth nature. That specific constitutional means was explained by Minor v. Happersett (1875) and U.S. v. Wong Kim Ark (1898) as contained in the common law with which the Framers were familiar when they drafted the Constitution and the “natural-born citizen” clause. And

Continued . . .

Mario Apuzzo, Esq. said...

II of II

these U.S. Supreme Court decisions also confirmed that the means for taking on that birth status provided by that common law is (1) being born in a country, and (2) to parents who were its “citizens” at the time of the child’s birth. So, the word “natural” is tied to specific means by which the birth status of being a “born Citizen” is realized, i.e., place of birth and “citizen” parents. This is the only means ever recognized by our Founders, Framers, Congress, and the U.S. Supreme Court to become a “natural born Citizen.” None other have ever existed. All other means to become a “born Citizen” produce a “naturalized born Citizen,” not a “natural born Citizen.” See Jill A. Pryor in her, The Natural-Born Citizen Clause and Presidential Eligibility: An Approach for Resolving Two Hundred Years of Uncertainty, 97 Yale L.J. 881 (1988) (recognizes statutory “born citizens” as “naturalized born citizens” and advocates making these “naturalized born citizens” the equivalent to “natural born Citizens”). This means that there is only one definition of a “natural born Citizen” and not various ones as is advocated by Maskell and his followers which would explain why no one debated the meaning of a “natural born Citizen” during the drafting and ratifying constitutional conventions.

Producing a “naturalized born citizen [subject]” is what the English common law did with children born in England to alien parents, i.e., naturalized them at birth to be “natural born subjects.” But as is evidence by the Naturalization Acts of 1790, 1795, 1802, and 1855, the Founders and Framers treated any child born with alienage (born to alien parents or born out of the United States) as alien born and in need of formal naturalization in order to at best become a “citizen of the United States” at birth or after birth. If the child was not born to U.S. “citizen” parents, that naturalization was done either derivatively through the naturalization of his or her alien parents if done during the child’s minority and when dwelling in the United States or on his or her own upon becoming an adult. How early Congress treated children born to alien parents further shows that Maskell is wrong. Maskell concedes in his CRS memo that the Founders and Framers would not have considered any child who was alien born and in need of naturalization as a “natural born Citizen,” which is another reason why Maskell is wrong in concluding that any citizen “at birth” or “from birth” is a “natural born Citizen.” All this also shows that the Founders and Framers did not adopt as the definition of a “natural born Citizen” the English common law definition of a “natural born subject,” with its conflicting birth allegiances (it did not require unification of jus soli and jus sanguinis at birth) for the unique singular and all-powerful sensitive Office of President and Commander in Chief of the Military. Rather, they adopted the law of nations definition of a “natural-born citizen,” which Minor and Wong Kim Ark said was “common law” to the Framers. It was this definition, which unifies jus sanguinis (birth parents) and jus soli (birth place) at the moment of birth (birth time), that best assured the Founders and Framers that future Presidents and Commanders in Chief would be born with sole allegiance to the United States and with no ties to any foreign nation.

So, we have seen that Maskell and those who follow him err in concluding that any citizen “at birth” or “from birth” is an Article II “natural born Citizen.” We have also seen that the correct definition of a “natural born Citizen” is a child born in a country to parents who were its “citizens” at the moment of the child’s birth.

Ray said...

Following on this:

Alexander Hamilton’s draft for the Constitution suggests in
Article IX, Section 1 that: "No person shall be eligible to the office of President of the United States unless he be now a Citizen of one of the States, or hereafter be born a Citizen of the United States."
(Works of Alexander Hamilton: Miscellanies, 1774-1789, page 407).


(~5 weeks later) - John Jay writes to General Washington: "...to declare expressly that the Commander in Chief of the American army shall not be given to nor devolve on, any but a natural born Citizen." - @h2ooflife April 16, 2013 at 2:31 AM

Consider:

It is with confederated states, as with individuals in society; something must be yielded up to make the whole secure. In this view of things, we gain by what we give, and draw an annual interest greater than the capital.—I ever feel myself hurt when I hear the union, that great palladium of our liberty and safety, the least irreverently spoken of. It is the most sacred thing in the constitution of America, and that, which every man should be most proud and tender of. Our citizenship in the United states is our national character. Our citizenship in any particular state, is only our local distinction. By the latter, we are known at home, by the former to the world. Our great title is, AMERICANS—our inferior one varies with the place.

Thomas Paine, The Crisis

Mario Apuzzo, Esq. said...

Ray,

Great find! This Thomas Paine piece confirms the great distinction that the Founders and Framers made between a national "natural born Citizen" and national "citizen of the United States" at birth or after birth on one hand and a citizen of a state on the other.

In keeping with that critical constitutional distinction, they would have applied national law to define the former and would have allowed the states to apply their local law or English common law to define their state citizenship at birth.

We know that the states did not totally accept that English common law to define their local citizenship, requiring persons not to be passing through their states just temporarily.
It is noteworthy that in interpreting the Fourteenth Amendment's "subject to the jurisdiction thereof" clause, Justice Gray in Wong Kim Ark also required that in order for a child to be born a "citizen of the United States" at birth (not to be conflated and confounded with a "natural born Citizen"), the U.S.-born child's alien parents be domiciled and residing in the United States.

This shows that any definition of a “natural born Citizen” that rests on the English common law or the common law of any state is erroneous. Rather, that definition must rest on national law which we know was not the English common law, for that law was not adopted as part of our national law. Rather, that national law was the law of nations, which was adopted as part of our national common law. We know that because even Minor called that law the “common law” and described as that which the Framers were familiar when they drafted the Constitution. So the “common law” of which Minor spoke was American national common law, not local English common law.

Anonymous said...

Ray, -an excellent find. But it doesn't support what Mario claims it does because so-called American common law didn't exist when the Constitution was written, -only state common law existed. The Law of Nations was not common law but became national law regarding only relationships with foreign nations (and perhaps between the states) as without it there would have been no guidelines whatsoever for a newly formed government.
It is unproven and unprovable that Vattel's description of the natural members of a country was somehow an integral element in national law that did not yet even exist.
But his point about an alien's residency being necessary for 14th Amendment citizenship cannot be over-emphasized as it is at the heart of the false claim that mere birth location alone imparts presidential eligibility.

MichaelN said...

Justice Story as cited by Horace Gray in the Wong Kim Ark case...

"Two things usually concur to create citizenship: first, birth locally within the dominions of the sovereign, and secondly, birth within the protection and obedience, or, in other words, within the allegiance of the sovereign.
That is, the party must be born within a place where the sovereign is at the time in full possession and exercise of his power, and the party must also, at his birth, derive protection from, and consequently owe obedience or allegiance to, the sovereign, as such, de facto."


TWO elements to being a "subject born", they being, place, and the allegiance of the parents in that place of the one who is born.

"Nothing is better settled at the common law than the doctrine that the children, even of aliens, born in a country while the parents are resident there under the protection of the government and owing a temporary allegiance thereto, are subjects by birth."

The English embraced the friendly aliens as subjects, so that their native-born children would be natural born subjects by being "born under the ligeance of a subject"

The US did not and does not embrace friendly aliens or any aliens as citizens, so to be consistent with the English rule, for a native-born in US to be a natural born citizen, the child would have to be "born under the ligeance" of a US father, i.e. the alien father would have to naturalize first.

It has always been about the allegiance of the father.

Native-birth has NEVER been the sole criteria for natural born citizen/subject.

Anonymous said...

MichaelN, your thinking is a little foggy due to errors of language.

"Two things usually concur to create citizenship: (Not natural citizenship, which is created in the not-usual occasions when not born in the king's dominion.
"TWO elements to being a "subject born",..." Where's the word Natural? It's not there.

"Nothing is better settled...than ...that the children, even of aliens,...are subjects by birth."
Notice again, no use of the word "natural".
"The English embraced the friendly aliens as subjects, [not so, the parents remained as aliens but via residence were also denizens] so that their native-born children would be natural born subjects." Opps! How did those words "natural-born" sneak in there? The subject is simply subject, not nbs.

"for a native-born in US to be a natural born citizen,...the alien father would have to naturalize first." Exactly so, but not by any rules. Rather, by the law of inherited nature (jus sanguinis). If the father is an American, so is his child. It's similar for a child of a domiciled alien, -one born before naturalization. Such a child is automatically naturalized by the father's naturalization, obtaining derivative citizenship through blood connection to him.

You ended with: "Native-birth has NEVER been the sole criteria for natural born citizen/subject."
That is true, but not the whole truth because, as I've shown, it has never been a criteria at all. It's all about the father and the nature inherited from him.

Check-out the excellent lay-out I created today to detail the 8 kinds of citizenship: http://h2ooflife.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/8_types_of_citizens-ds.jpg It's something new, different, and revealing.

Carlyle said...

I don't know why, but I feel compelled to post a variant of this thought every few weeks. SIGH!

The Constitution is NOT an obtuse academic document with copious footnotes and obscure definitions. It is a simple document written in plain English. Most importantly - it was written to be immediately and directly understood.

The Founding Fathers must be turning in their graves watching our misguided attempts to pound square pegs into round holes. They would never have expected any constitutional debate or law case to go on for extended pages. Except for the sweeping changes (upending, actually) brought about by the 14th, constitutional law should be pretty simple, and short and sweet.

The only things that matter are:

1. What do the words most directly say and mean?

2. What appears to be the intent of the FFs.

In both those cases, it is abundantly clear that the phrase Natural Born Citizen was meant to be tightly restrictive.

One can have an interesting debate on whether "times have changed" and a more loose definition would now be acceptable, or maybe no such restriction at all. But the only legitimate place that discussion can lead is to a constitutional amendment. It is an obscene abuse of the Rule of Law to twist and change things on the fly to suit our various wishes and prejudices.

And, no, the 14th amendment clearly has nothing to do with anything, in this context.

More SIGHs!

Mario Apuzzo, Esq. said...

Carlyle,

Unfortunately, when the stakes are high, people do insist that square pegs do fit exactly into round holes.

Anonymous said...

Mario Apuzzo, Esq. said...

"Unfortunately, when the stakes are high, people do insist that square pegs do fit exactly into round holes."

Truer words were never spoken. It's one thing to debate with an honest mind about logic and logic errors, it's quite another to argue with deliberate perverters of logic and twisters of facts. Debates like ours that take place at Dr. Conspiracy's site are stellar examples of the latter.

Anonymous said...

Something extraordinary just happened. While thinking about one thing, the meaning of another became transparently clear for the

first time, namely the meaning of "natural born citizen". I've asserted that its meaning is based on natural law alone, but I forgot

something that no one ever mentions, but which is integral to the meaning of and understanding of those words. I always had a

feeling that there was still one piece to the puzzle that was missing, -a key that would unlock its transparent meaning, and now that key

has presented itself to me serendipitously, while I was ruminating about how no one ever asks why the government, if it can grant

citizenship, does not rescind citizenship even more easily. Why the government did not rescind the citizenship of Major Hassan after

he committed treason and massacred all of the Army volunteers at Fort Hood. If his citizenship had been granted by the government

via naturalization, why couldn't it un-naturalize him, strip him of his citizenship and declare him an enemy combatant who should be

incarcerated in Gitmo?

The answer to that question was very enlightening. It was, as I learned a million words ago, due to the fact that natural-ization

makes one a natural citizen in the eyes of the law. One is made natural by it.
Natural citizens are not granted their inborn nature by law or government. They are born as Americans, inheriting the American

(political) nature, status, citizenship. Government can not rescind natural citizenship anymore than it can rescind one's race or

gender. So once one becomes natural-ized, their citizenship can not be revoked because they are in the eyes of the government,

natural citizens.
The founders knew this since they were men quite aware of the principle of naturalization, knowing what had eluded my conscious

grasp for all of my time addressing the meaning of natural born citizen.
So they realized that not all "natural citizens" were made by nature because some were made by human action, -as a kind of fiction

of law, -similar to calling an alien subject's son a "natural born subject" when he in fact was an alien born subject. more...

Anonymous said...

[an alien subject is an oxymoron that results from the confluence of natural law and human law (government authority). An alien is a foreigner, but when he takes-up residency in another government's land he falls under its jurisdiction, which includes a civic responsibility to defend that land and people that are his adopted land and people. He is not a subject in a strict sense since he was not born a subject, but since he is fully subject to the national authority, he can be called a subject because he is subject, as a member of the society and nation in which he lives and works.]

Alexander Hamilton advocated that the presidency be reserved solely for those born as citizens, excluding naturalized citizens, to which John Jay, future Chief Justice, strongly suggested to General Washington the additional factor of being a natural born citizen. He even underlined the word "born", -which made no sense to me and made me wonder if he inadvertantly underlined the wrong word since I considered "born" to be redundant being as all natural citizens are citizens by birth. But I was missing the last piece of the puzzle; -the fact that not all natural citizens are born citizens because some were once foreigners made into natural citizens via a fiction of law. So to prevent foreigners from being eligible to serve as President by becoming natural-ized, it was necessary to distinguish natural citizens by law and natural citizens by birth.
If he had reversed the order of the words (a born natural citizen) they would have meant the same thing. Those not born as natural citizens were in fact alien-born natural citizens, and they were not to be trusted as the Commander-in-Chief after the Revolutionary War generation had passed.
So Obama not only was not born as a natural citizen, (nor even a born-citizen by the 14th Amendment), but neither he nor his father were natural citizens via the naturalization process (as far as we know, -which is doubtless since he never registered with Selective Service as all U.S. residents are required upon reaching the age of 18.
So..., a natural born citizen is one who did not become a natural citizen via naturalization, -by law, but became one by birth.
Now I have a lot of writings to correct, someday.

Ray said...

Claims that "natural born subject" is English common law are nonsense.

"Natural born subjects" are defined by Parliament, not customary English common law.

The United States has not incorporated acts of Parliament!

MichaelN said...

h2ooflife said...

"MichaelN, your thinking is a little foggy due to errors of language.

"Two things usually concur to create citizenship: (Not natural citizenship, which is created in the not-usual occasions when not born in the king's dominion.
"TWO elements to being a "subject born",..." Where's the word Natural? It's not there."

.................
Response:

In 17th century English law, "subject born" was another term used to describe a natural born subject.

Lord Coke - Calvin's case...

"There is found in the law four kinds of ligeances: the first is, ligeantia naturalis, absoluta, pura, et indefinita,42 and this originally is due by nature and birthright, and is called alta ligeantia42a and he that oweth this is called subditus natus."

"he that is born under the natural and absolute ligeance of the King (which as it hath been said, is alta ligeantia) as the plaintiff in the case in question was, ought to be a natural born subject; for localis ligeantia est ligeantia infima et minima, et maxime incerta.53 And it is to be observed, that it is nec coelum, nec solum,54 neither the climate nor the soyl, but ligeantia and obedientia that make the subject born: for if enemies should come into the realm, and possess a town or fort, and have issue there, that issue is no subject to the King of England, though he be born upon his soyl, and under his meridian, for that he was not born under the ligeance of a subject, nor under the protection of the King."

Mario Apuzzo, Esq. said...

Ray,

No one has ever argued that a colonial "natural born subject" is not defined under English common law, but rather only under Acts of Parliament. Can you provide the reasoned basis for your argument.

Unknown said...

Mario Apuzzo, Esq. wrote:
"You continue with your deceitful presentation of what the debate is, failing to tell us that my argument is that you and ALJ Masin in New Jersey conflate and confound a 'natural born Citizen' under American national common law with a “citizen of the United States” at birth under the Fourteenth Amendment."

Where did I... Oh, in a comment you censored out, yet to which you reply. 'Tis a cowardly thing you do, Mr. Apuzzo.

"When I told ALJ Masin in New Jersey that I did not agree with Justice Gray, it was because the judge said that Wong Kim Ark established that the English common law 'was adopted in the Constitution.' There simply is no historical or legal support for what Justice Gray and Judge Masin said. The Constitution never adopted any English common law."

And because you don't let my comment appear, you get to pretend that what you write is responsive. Nope. The point is that when Justice Gray said that, he was joined by five other justices and was speaking for the United States Supreme Court. However poorly you think the Supreme Court supported its majority opinion, but ALJ Masin had insuperable support: an never-reversed majority opinion of the United States Supreme Court.

Carlyle said...

in re: "Unfortunately, when the stakes are high".

That has been exactly one of my recurring points. You cannot make decisions like this when the stakes are high - or if forced into it, you must objectively imagine the situation where the stakes were not high, nor the decision urgent.

That is the only way you can come up with correct reasoning. Otherwise you are left with the bizarre (but undoubtedly all to common) legal practice of "This is the answer I want, no go see if you can manufacture some BS to defend this outcome."

Pop Quiz for you Legal Experts:

How many times have you read a SCOTUS decision that read like manufactured BS to try to defend a desired outcome? If nothing jumps to mind, may I especially suggest two words to you: Emanations, Penumbras.

Mario Apuzzo, Esq. said...

Unknown,

I am not aware of my not approving any of your comments as you allege I have done. Can you resend to me the comments to which you refer so that I can review the matter.

Unknown said...

Unknown, wong kim ark was ruled a citizen of the united states in 1898 unless i am missing something. The naturalization act of 1795 was signed by George Washington and it says children born outside of US to american citizens are citizens of the United States. Washington was also president of Constitutional convention when article 2 was adopted and A2 says a citizen of the united states would not be eligible after adoption. Am i reading this simple law wrong or does A2 mean what it actually says? You have to be a natural born citizen of the United States, not just a "citizen" to be eligible after adoption. If anyone thinks the Founders wanted to hand the keys of US army over to someone who was born a foreign citizen after barely winning the revolutionary war then they are either a total fool or totally dishonest

Anonymous said...

unknown wrote: "The point is that when Justice Gray said that, he was joined by five other justices and was speaking for the United States Supreme Court. However poorly you think the Supreme Court supported its majority opinion,..."

I'm not a lawyer nor much of a student of the Supreme Court, but I'll be danged if it makes any sense at all to call the historical ruminations and elucidations released as background and basis for the ultimate issuance of an official "opinion of the Court" is *the* opinion of the court!
Such background facts, history, logic, assumptions, etc. are NOT the opinion of the court. They are merely incidental to it, and as such are *not* "the law of the land" as is the opinion or ruling itself.

What justice Gray wrote is not "speaking" and his thought were not the thoughts of "the court" unless they all had a mind meld and were all of one hive-mind. They were his thoughts and work product to which the others agreed enough to endorse them. But numbers to not make right nor truth nor power. Or else the Third Reich would still be standing and we would still be ruled by the British.

Teo Bear said...

Gentlemen and Gentle-ladies who read this blog,

As my friend Carlyle I have recently been thinking about the purpose of maintaining the fight to show BHO Jr. is not a natural born citizen.

While Mario might nobly argue for the purity of the law, I would submit to you a more mundane reason. We maintain this blog and others in order to maintain the "Sword of Damocles" in its position.

While not a constitutional check on Obama's power, we have in our own way increased the national resistance to his usurpation of power to the point that over 1/2 of the people have some doubts about Obama's birth narrative, with 35% out right believing he is not a natural born citizen and only 25% swearing he is.

It may come down to our efforts which apply a sort of speed break to any attempt to impose martial law or strip away our God given rights. We have established enough of a question about Obama's eligibility that we will not go gently into the night.

For all your hard work, determination and support a very sharp sword representing 35% of America hangs above his head.

The truth is our hard work has derailed the Obama Express that started in 2008, unfortunately we are seeing the destruction this train wreck has caused, but when the smoke clears, all your efforts will be vindicated.

If you need proof about my observations just look at the way the MSM and left wing politicians handled the 2013 Boston Massacre and how the average American rejected their knee jerk premise of a anti-Obama white-right wing NRA inspired perpetrator was to blame.

The truth is the resistance to Obama's desire to destroy this nation started with and remains with us. You have done good my friends.

Happy Patriots Day!

Teo

Mario Apuzzo, Esq. said...

Leo Drosia,

Add to your ingredients Unknown's we-are-the-world, feel-good attitude about who is eligible to be President and lead our Great Military and his tortured reading of the Fourteenth Amendment and Wong Kim Ark and you have got the entire recipe.

MichaelN said...

A reading of the Wong Kim Ark decision reveals that the SCOTUS favorably quoted Horace Binney's recognition of two types of born US citizens, one being "the child of an alien, if born in the country" and the other being "the natural born child of a citizen".

Add to this the SCOTUS in the Wong Kim Ark case also favorably citing the Minor v Happersett case where the SCOTUS held that the 14th Amendment "does not say" who shall be natural born citizens.

By virtue of the SCOTUS in the WKA case recognizing that there could be a born citizen (aka "the child of an alien, if born in the country") i.e. born native, without US citizen parents, and thus not "the natural born child of a citizen", and that this US citizenship can only be via the 14th Amendment, which does not say who shall be natural born, the citizens, then the SCOTUS in the Wong Kim Ark case has said that the term "natural born" can ONLY APPLY to children of US citizens.

Mario Apuzzo, Esq. said...

Unknown at April 14, 2013 at 2:17 PM,

You come off with your criticism of my position with one big red herring. I keep telling you that Wong Kim Ark did two things. One, it confirmed Minor v. Happersett’s American national common law definition of an Article II “natural born Citizen” which Minor said was a child born in a country to parents who were its “citizens” at the time of the child’s birth. Two, it created a new “citizen of the United States” at birth based on birth in the country, by reliance upon the colonial English common law as an aid to construing “subject to the jurisdiction thereof.” Under that new definition, it included children born in the United States to domiciled and resident alien parents as “citizens of the United States” at birth.

The issue of our debate is what is the correct constitutional definition of a “natural born Citizen.” That inquiry comes under Wong’s point one. That Barack Obama satisfies Wong Kim Ark’s definition of a “citizen of the United States” at birth under its point two Fourteenth Amendment analysis, whether the Court’s interpretation and application of that amendment is right or wrong, does not in the least change or control the definition of a “natural born Citizen” which as we have seen comes under point one.

So, your talk about me not accepting “the authority of the U.S. Supreme Court” and that I do not understand that “[t]he U.S. Supreme Court is the highest authority in American common law” does not amount to a hill of beans, because my criticism of the Wong Kim Ark decision is directed to how it arrived at it decision that Wong was a “citizen of the United States” at birth under Fourteenth Amendment, not with its confirmation of Minor’s American common law definition of a “natural born Citizen” which amply demonstrates that Barack Obama, Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, Bobby Jindal, and Nikki Haley are not eligible to be President.

js said...

All the technical legalese in the world is useless until its enforced. Nothing will be done until the government is willing to accept responsibility and take action. 5 years now and the only thing that it does is make fun of the truth.

They have consumed the very definition of corruption.

MichaelN said...

js said...

"All the technical legalese in the world is useless until its enforced. Nothing will be done until the government is willing to accept responsibility and take action. 5 years now and the only thing that it does is make fun of the truth.

They have consumed the very definition of corruption."
...................

Jack Maskell's memo must be exposed for the deliberately misleading document that it is.

The representatives in US government will continue to hide behind Maskell's definition of natural born citizen, and they will do NOTHING.

As far as they are concerned, case closed.

There needs to be a public exposition of Maskell's deceit and the government representatives must be put on the spot publicly, to acknowledge the CORRECT definition of "natural born Citizen".

This is probably the best way, as it may be a means for them to save face, in that they can cry ignorance as victims of Maskell's deceit.

It must be done, sooner rather than later.

Unknown said...

I know congress will never remove him over the tiny matter he is most likely not even a citizen but i agree with teo in that at least more people are aware now of what a article 2 nbc actually was in minds of Framers.

Unknown said...

Mario Apuzzo, Esq. said...
"I am not aware of my not approving any of your comments as you allege I have done. Can you resend to me the comments to which you refer so that I can review the matter."

Alas, my record-keeping is not so good. I believed what I wrote at the time, but this may have been my mistake. I wish to retract my remark on that.

Unknown said...

Mario Apuzzo, Esq. wrote:
"You come off with your criticism of my position with one big red herring. I keep telling you that Wong Kim Ark did two things. One, it confirmed Minor v. Happersett’s American national common law definition of an Article II 'natural born Citizen' which Minor said was a child born in a country to parents who were its “citizens” at the time of the child’s birth."

And then we read it and find:

"There is no common law of the United States, in the sense of a national customary law, distinct from the common law of England as adopted by the several States each for itself, applied as its local law, and subject to such alteration as may be provided by its own statutes." "There is, however, one clear exception to the statement that there is no national common law. The interpretation of the Constitution of the United States is necessarily influenced by the fact that its provisions are framed in the language of the English common law, and are to be read in the light of its history." United States v. Wong Kim Ark, 169 US 654 (1898), quoting Smith v. Alabama, 124 U.S. 478.


Mario Apuzzo, Esq. wrote:
"The issue of our debate is what is the correct constitutional definition of a 'natural born Citizen.' That inquiry comes under Wong’s point one."

Obviously the term derives from the English 'natural-born subject', as the Majority Opinion explains. For the definition the Court quotes British jurist A. V. Dicey:

"'Natural-born British subject' means a British subject who has become a British subject at the moment of his birth." 657.

That, Mr. Apuzzo, is a definition. It says what the term "means". The inclusive statement in Minor v. Happersett is not a definition. Likewise, the 14'th Amendment contains no definition of "Citizen of the United States", contrary to some of your previous reporting.

As for who qualifies, the Wong Majority Opinion states, again in quotation:

"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." 654, quoting United States v. Rhodes, (1866).


Mario Apuzzo, Esq. wrote:
"So, your talk about me not accepting 'the authority of the U.S. Supreme Court' and that I do not understand that '[t]he U.S. Supreme Court is the highest authority in American common law' does not amount to a hill of beans, because my criticism of the Wong Kim Ark decision is directed to how it arrived at it decision that Wong was a 'citizen of the United States' at birth under Fourteenth Amendment [...]"

That's no counter. Whatever your criticism of the Wong Kim Ark decision, the decision is law and your criticism is not. When ALJ Masin specifically asked about a point Wong, you actually replied, "With all due respect to the United States Supreme Court, and to Justice Grey, there's no support for what he says." That response displays a profound misunderstanding of our legal system and nothing you've written here explains it away.


Mario Apuzzo, Esq. continued:
"[...] not with its confirmation of Minor’s American common law definition of a “natural born Citizen” which amply demonstrates that Barack Obama, Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, Bobby Jindal, and Nikki Haley are not eligible to be President."

That's in your imagination, not the Majority Opinion.

Unknown said...

Carlyle wrote:
"That has been exactly one of my recurring points. You cannot make decisions like this when the stakes are high - or if forced into it, you must objectively imagine the situation where the stakes were not high, nor the decision urgent."

We must imagine? Really? How about we just look back a few years to when the matter was not urgent? Legal scholars have examined the meaning of the Article II NBC clause when there was no particular candidate at issue, when what was at stake was principle and future possibility.

Carlyle, you could scarcely have raised a stronger point against your side. There is a citable body of legal scholarship considering this question academically, on principle, without bias of political urgency. The eligibility of the native-born is clear and settled and no one in our time said different until a certain faction needed reasons why Barack Obama cannot be president.

js said...

Obviously, Unknown is not capable of understanding the same issue that has been hashed over and over in his face.

The same arguments he has made over and over do not change. It gets down to the adage that if you tell a lie often enough, people will believe it.

Even though its still a lie.

MichaelN said...

Unknown said ....

"And then we read it and find:

"There is, however, one clear exception to the statement that there is no national common law. The interpretation of the Constitution of the United States is necessarily influenced by the fact that its provisions are framed in the language of the English common law, and are to be read in the light of its history." United States v. Wong Kim Ark, 169 US 654 (1898), quoting Smith v. Alabama, 124 U.S. 478."

....................

Then we read English common law and find that it is the allegiance of the parents which makes the parents subjects, and as a consequence, any native-born children of those alien-subject parents becomes a natural born subject, not because of being native-born, but because of being "born under the ligeance of a subject".....

"There be regulary (unlesse it be in special cases) three incidents to a subject born.
1. That the parents be under the actual obedience of the king.
2. That the place of his birth be within the king’s dominion.
And 3. the time of his birth is chiefly to be considered"


In English law, native birth was expressly rejected as sufficient to make a natural born subject.

"And it is to be observed, that it is nec coelum, nec solum,54 neither the climate nor the soyl, but ligeantia and obedientia that make the subject born: for if enemies should come into the realm, and possess a town or fort, and have issue there, that issue is no subject to the King of England, though he be born upon his soyl, and under his meridian, for that he was not born under the ligeance of a subject, nor under the protection of the King."

Per 17th century English law it was jus soli which made the father a subject, then consequently jus sanguinis which made his native-born child a natural born subject.

IF the Framers did follow the English law, then for a native-born child to be a natural born citizen of the US, that child would have to be "born under the ligeance of a" citizen. (aka a subject in English terms)

NOWHERE in 17th century English law was it ever held or ruled that native-birth sufficed to make a natural born subject....... NOWHERE!

In determining either alien-born or subject born, it has always been dependent on the subject status of the PARENTS.

"The place is observable, but so as many times ligeance or obedience without any place within the king’s dominions may make a subject born, but any place within the king’s dominions may make a subject born, but any place within the king’s dominions without obedience can never produce a natural subject."

"This word ligeance is well expressed by divers several names or synonymia which we find in our books. Sometime it is called the obedience or obeysance of the subject to the King"




MichaelN said...

Unknown, in one of his rants of absurdity said....

"the 14th Amendment contains no definition of "Citizen of the United States"

.............

Absolute GARBAGE!

The definition of a "citizen of the United States" is....

"All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof"

"Amendment XIV
Section 1.

All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside...... "

MichaelN said...

Unknown said...

"As for who qualifies, the Wong Majority Opinion states, again in quotation:

"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." 654, quoting United States v. Rhodes, (1866).

"born in the allegiance" means to be "born under the ligeance of a subject"/citizen.

According to English law, the ONLY WAY a native-born child could be a natural born subject, was to be "born under the ligeance of a subject".

The English law expressly rejected native-birth as sufficient to make a subject at all.

You really need to wake-up to the fact that "alien-born" or "alien" does not necessarily equate to a foreign place, as we can see from the English law where it was said...

"An alien born is of foreign birth or foreign allegiance"

So what you quoted did not and does not mean what you so desperately wish it meant.

Another EPIC FAIL for you Unknown.

MichaelN said...

From the DECISION of the SCOTUS in the Wong Kim Ark we can see that the SCOTUS favorably cited to Horace Binney's recognition of TWO types of born US citizens,
i.e. one being "the child of an alien, if born in the country" and the other being "the NATURAL BORN child OF A CITIZEN".

Thus the DECISION of the Wong Kim Ark case held that there were TWO types of born US citizens, and that the term "natural born" had no association with place of birth but rather was expressly and solely associated with PARENTS.

Anonymous said...


MichaelN quoted: "but any place within the king’s dominions without obedience can never produce a natural subject."

That is at the heart of the matter; -who is truly under subjection to the national government? On that topic, here's part of something that I'm currently working on:

...Whether defense is on the personal level or on the national level, the principle is the same; -the primal duty to defend those who are dependent on you, and to whom you are bonded.
Back when the 14th Amendment was being written, Native Americans and Gypsies were deemed to be excluded from the citizensip provision of the Civil Rights Act of 1866 because they had no bond to American society and were not judged to be under the jurisdiction of the local or county or state governments because they (Gypsies) were transients everywhere they went, -with no attachments to other Americans, having their own law and leadership. Therefore they were not included in the meaning of the jurisdiction under which citizens lived because they did not live under it, and therefore citizenship was not intended to be imputed to them since they were completely outsiders.

They had no primal bond to other Americans, and thus weren't under a primal duty to defend a people that they were not a part of. As such, they had no obligation of obedience to the authority governing the American people since they were separate and apart from them. They had a right to not be subjugated by a power that was not a part of their structure and identity.
Immigrants come from a place and life where the same circumstance is true, but after adopting America as their new home and nation, their former bond and duty is neutralized by their new obligation to their new society and country. They therefore become subject to the authority of their new nation's government. That is a truth that was not acknowledged by the United States government from its establishment until the Supreme Court in 1898 declared that the children of immigrants are born subject to the authority of Washington and therefore are American citizens by the 14th Amendment. That opinion was diametrically opposed to the position of the United States government and every court in which it was tried until it was reversed by a majority on the high court.
What primal principle was the government following for over a century instead of the one the high court mandated be followed? It was the principle of duty being tied to identity. If your identity was not American, then you were not under the jurisdiction of the American government because you were under no obligation to fulfill a duty to a people and nation that are not your own. To be a part of the American people and nation you had to be natural-ized by rejecting your former sovereign, monarch, potentate, and his government. If you were not willing to do so, then you were not to be considered to be an American, and only Americans were capable of begetting American children since children naturally inherit the political status of the father (the head of the household).

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