John Jay's Charge to the Grand Jury

".. who made the laws of nations? The answer is he who..."

John Jay's Charge to the Grand Jury

This post is modified with corrections from a similar post that was posted on Mario Apuzzo's blog on July 18, 2014 at 5:35 PM.

>> http://puzo1.blogspot.com/2013/07/the-constitution-rule-of-law-and.html?commentPage=15

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Here is something from John Jay that mentions his views on "a novel doctrine ... citizens ... expatriate", laws of nations, treaties, laws of the United States, regulate the conduct of the citizens.

I thought that Jay's explicit statement about “... who made the laws of nations? The answer is he who...,” will add something of substance that expresses John Jay's original genesis implicit presuppositions that are inherent in his underlining the natural law word "born" in "natural born Citizen" and which were obviously also understood by the constitution convention delegates who accepted Jay's helpful suggestion that was incorporated into Article II.

The date is not listed, but Jay's charge to the grand jury follows Jay's May 12, 1793 letter to President Washington on LibertyFund.org.

John Jay, The Correspondence and Public Papers of John Jay, vol. 3 (1782-1793) [1891]
>> http://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/2329

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CHARGE TO GRAND JURY, RICHMOND, VIRGINIA.

"It is an observation no less useful than true, that nations and individuals injure their essential interests in proportion as they deviate from order. By order I mean that national regularity which results from attention and obedience to those rules and principles of conduct which reason indicates and which morality and wisdom prescribe. Those rules and principles reach every station and condition in which individuals can be placed, and extend to every possible situation in which nations can find themselves.

"Among these rules are comprehended the laws of the land, and that they may be so observed as to produce the regularity and order intended by them, courts of justice were instituted whose business it is to punish offences and to render right to those who suffer wrong.

"To inquire into and present those offences is the duty which the law generally imposes upon you, and, as there is a national tribunal having cognizance only of offences against the laws of the United States, your inquiries and presentments are to be confined to offences of that description.

"The Constitution, the statutes of Congress, the laws of nations, and treaties constitutionally made compose the laws of the United States.

"You will perceive that the object is twofold: To regulate the conduct of the citizens relative to our own nation and people, and relative to foreign nations and their subjects.

"To the first class belong those statutes which respect trades, navigation, and finance, and ...

[...]

"The present state of affairs requires that the second object of the laws should be attentively regarded. I mean those which regulate our conduct relative to foreign nations.

"This head comprises the laws of nations and treaties.

"By the laws of nations our conduct relative to other nations is to be regulated both in peace and in war. It is a subject that merits attention and inquiry, and it is much to be wished that it may be more generally studied and understood.

It may be asked who made the laws of nations? The answer is he from whose will proceed all moral obligations, and which will is made known to us by reason or by revelation.

Nations are, in respect to each other, in the same situation as independent individuals in a state of nature.

Suppose twenty families should be cast on an island and after dividing it between them conclude to remain unconnected with each other by any kind of government, would it thence follow that there are no laws to direct their conduct towards one another? Certainly not. Would not the laws of reason and morality direct them to behave to each other with respect, with justice, with benevolence, with good faith—would not those laws direct them to abstain from violence, to abstain from interfering in their respective domestic government and arrangements, to abstain from causing quarrels and dissensions in each other’s families? If they made treaties, would they not be bound to observe them? Or if by consent expressed or implied they gave occasion to usages mutually convenient, would not those usages grow into conventional laws? The answer is obvious.

In like manner the nations throughout the world are like so many great families placed by Providence on the earth, who having divided it between them, remain perfectly distinct from and independent of each other. Between them there is no judge but the great Judge of all. They have a perfect right to establish such governments and build such houses as they prefer, and their neighbors have no right to pull down either because not fashioned according to their ideas of perfection; in a word, one has no right to interfere in the affairs of another, but all are bound to behave to each other with respect, with justice, with benevolence, and with good faith.

[...]

"A novel doctrine has been propagated and found some advocates even in this enlightened country—viz., that as citizens have a right to expatriate, so they have a right to engage and enlist in the military service of one of the powers at war, provided they at the same time declare that they expatriate. I make no remarks on this ridiculous doctrine—its absurdity is obvious.

"Of national violations of our neutrality our government only can take cognizance. Questions of peace and war and reprisals and the like do not belong to courts of justice, nor to individual citizens, nor to associations of any kind, and for this plain reason: because the people of the United States have been pleased to commit them to Congress.

"Are we then to punish our citizens for hostile conduct towards such of the belligerent powers as violate our neutrality and do us injustice? This is a natural question.

"There must be order in society or the bonds of it will soon be dissolved. This order consists in every man moving in his own sphere, doing the duties incumbent upon him, and not going out of the circle of his own rights and powers to meddle with or officiously supervise those of others.

The great question before mentioned being committed exclusively to Congress, they must be left to deliberate, and their decisions must be conclusive.

[...]

Art
U.S. Constitution: The Original "Birther" Document of the "Union"