Exclusive Original Intent vs. Prof. Akhil Reed Amar's "Implicit" Constitution

EXclusive INTENT dittos

or

Exclusive Original Intent vs. Prof. Akhil Reed Amar’s “Implicit” Constitution

Today I also put this on Mario Apuzzo’s Natural Born Citizen blog

>> https://puzo1.blogspot.com/2016/07/carmon-elliott-files-petition-for-writ.html

Mario, that is a good point by Carlyle. Did the "legislative or legal system" clarify...ever?

On pages 240-245 of his book The Constitution Today Yale Prof. of Law Amar seems to think that with the 1868 Fourteenth Amendment the "system" clarified the issue of who is a citizen and their birthrights.

He says on pages 240-41:

"We begin with the Constitution itself. The Fourteenth Amendment opens with a promise of birth equality: 'All persons born . . . in the United States . . . are citizens; and thus equal [his emphasis] citizens."

In the last sentence at the bottom of page 240 Amar implies that even "plop-and-drop" anchor babies are citizens, with the tacit implication that they are eligible to be president.

He says:

"A child born in America to a family of noncitizen parents is a full birthright citizen with all the same entitlements and privileges as any other American child."

Amar concludes the "birthright citizen" point with a comment about homosexuality and heterosexuality, and then concludes on page 245 with comments about transgenders, implying that the Fourteenth Amendment from 1868 on also applies to future changes in America.

He says on page 241:

"And today we make clear that those born gay or lesbian are no less in civil rights than those born straight."

Amar extrapolates further about being “born’” on pages 241-245 and mentions racial equality, civil rights, sex discrimination, women's civil rights, being born blind, diseases, marriage laws, religious equality, racial separation, etc., and concludes with this comment about “equality and freedom”:

He says:

“To put this point about the deep connection between equality and freedom a different way – and to explain from yet another angle why we now must vindicate the enacted letter and spirit of the Fourteenth Amendment without being hamstrung by every specific nontextual and unratified factual or normative assumption that its framers may have held – we today take judicial notice of the following basic and widespread facts of our modern world. Sexual intimacy and human procreation have been profoundly decoupled in the last half-century. Persons can have babies without having sex (in vitro fertilization) and ….”

After a few more comments about marriage laws, genders, transgenders staying married to their spouses and creating a same-sex marriage, transgender birth certificates and transgender driver’s licenses and transgender passports, Amar concludes his comments with a sentence which implies that what law professors say the law means today is what the law meant to the law writers of the past – last week or last century or 1868:

He says:

“Our fundamental nature is not male or female, black or white, but human, pure and simple. Our most basic law must recognize these basic facts of modern life, modern law, and modern science.”

Mario, I would like to add to a previous comment that I put here on June 20, 2017 at 10:45 PM in which I finished with "This is not a previous essay, but it is definitely an excellent point about the Fourteenth Amendment and 'citizenship rights'”.

Yes, it’s an excellent point – except for Prof. Amar's implication that the Fourteenth Amendment is the constitutional authority that allows plop-and-drop anchor babies, who are born on U.S. soil to parents who are not U.S. citizens, to be eligible to be president. The implication is shallow, thoughtless, irrational, and contrary to self-preservation.

Mario, as a lawyer, and since this Article II Section clause 5 “natural born Citizen” debate will never die as long as “natural born Citizen” remains in the constitution, you should challenge Prof. Amar here on your Natural Born Citizen blog about his “equality and freedom” proposition, something that he has been writing about for years. You should publicly challenge the “equality and freedom” of Prof. Amar in the context of a person being eligible to be president as being “contrary to self-preservation” relative to his explicit statement on page 241:

>> "A child born in America to a family of noncitizen parents is a full birthright citizen with all the same entitlements and privileges as any other American child."

It is shallow, thoughtless and irrational for a tenured law professor to propose that a child born on U.S. soil to "noncitizen parents is a full birthright citizen" because his statement is another way of saying to the whole world these two things:

(1) All you parents, citizens of the world, you all come here, you hear, and have your babies in America and your baby can be president of America someday just like wanna be presidents Gov. Bobby Jindal, Sen. Marco Rubio, Gov./Amb. Nikki Haley – cuz that's what Prof. Amar teaches his students – the Fourteenth Amendment includes all peoples of the world who manage to have their anchor baby born, uh, I mean, who manage to have their child touch down on U.S. soil.

(2) Sure, visit Saudi Arabia or ANY Muslim country, and if you are a woman and have a child to a Muslim man in a Muslim country, well, for sure, your baby can also be president of of America with only one U.S. citizen parent just like wanna be president Sen. Ted Cruz – cuz, well, we're inclusive in America, shucks, we're so inclusive that we're for "liberty and equality" for all – so, you all come here, now. Hear?

Can you all hear me now?

The “equality and freedom” of Prof. Amar being “contrary to self-preservation” is a point that is NEVER discussed by Amar because nobody ever challenges him, and of course it is also never mentioned because it is never considered relevant by Levin, Solum, Natelson and others when they defend using the Fourteenth Amendment to justify eligibility to be president to plop-and-drop anchor babies simply because they were born on U.S. soil to parents who were not U.S. citizens at the time they (the father who brought the mother) plopped themselves onto a hospital bed and dropped their anchor baby.

Mario, if anybody wants to read more, here is the url and three dates from two years ago when I commented about Prof. Amar and his "equality and freedom" emphasis, although previously he phrased it "liberty and equality" consistently in his 2012 book America's Unwritten Constitution: The Precedents and Principles We Live By.

>> http://puzo1.blogspot.com/2015/05/senator-cruz-senator-rubio-and-governor.html

June 21, 2015 at 11:07 PM

June 24, 2015 at 3:52 PM

June 26, 2015 at 2:01 PM

June 24, 2015 at 3:52 PM – Prof. Amar's Three Rules for amendments "...that fits our tradition":

Rule # 1: Amendments must add to Liberty and Equality

_Flag Burning

_Campaign Finance Reform

_Marriage and Tradition

Rule #2: Both Political Parties Must Agree

Rule #3: States Test Ideas First

_Direct Election of the President

_POTUS Eligibility of Foreign Born

_Homosexual Marriage "Implicitly" in the Constitution

1- Flag Burning

2- Campaign Finance Reform

3- Marriage and Tradition

4- Direct Election of the President

5- POTUS Eligibility for Foreign Born

6- Homosexual Marriage "Implicitly" in the Constitution

Prof. Amar's comments, as a recognized constitutional law scholar and political scientist, are intended to be socially transformative and, as he self-identified in the panel discussion, a registered Democrat, so, as the current Democratic Party is constituted since the new Democrat activists, aka Liberals, aka Progressives, aka Socialists, aka Marxists, aka whatever new “ist” fits, took it over, Prof. Amar's comments reveal, politically, progressive new thought socialism with a new meaning to “liberty and equality” and “implicit.”

Although Professor Amar does not reference Article II and “natural born Citizen” in this panel discussion, his “liberty and equality” focus, along with his “...three rules, prescriptive and descriptive...for constitutional amendments”, indicates that the Constitution's heterosexual preamble word “posterity,” as related to the three heterosexual related POTUS eligibility requirement words “natural born Citizen,” will require the exclusivity of “natural born Citizen” as a reference to ONLY birth on U.S. soil ONLY to two U.S. citizen married parents to be excised from Article II by removing the written words “natural born Citizen” from the Constitution. The excision of “natural born Citizen” from Article II will be the necessary consequence if Prof. Amar's “liberty and equality” proposal to amend the written Constitution to include homosexuality is endorsed by all political parties and then ratified by the states because the “implicit constitution” of Prof. Amar condones the implication of including natural law homosexuality to be on par with natural law heterosexuality.

Professor Amar's 2012 book, titled America's Unwritten Constitution: The Precedents and Principles We Live By*, and the first chapter, titled Reading Between the Lines: America's Implicit Constitution, indicate that as a socialist progressive, Yale Law Prof. Amar can allow anything to be “implicit” in the written Constitution if it promotes the agenda to “transform the United States of America” by transforming the U.S. Constitution into a “liberty and equality” “implicit constitution” in which can be found anything, including promoting the homosexual agenda of less than 2% of the American population. See below an “implicitly” constitutional new meaning: “...no discrimination on the grounds of [homosexual] sex. I think it would be nice to have that in our federal constitution. It's [homosexual “sex” is] already there implicitly,” followed in the next sentence with “States are giving us gay marriage”.

*America's Unwritten Constitution ( http://www.americasunwrittenconstitution.com/ )

Prof. Amar's intent is to amend the U.S. Constitution with three amendments so that each “...fits our tradition” as he defines “tradition,” specifically the tradition of marriage and posterity since the 1787 “We the People” wrote the words “...to form a more perfect Union” for themselves and their “Posterity” as the Union populated. If Prof. Amar's three amendments listed below are ratified, at least one amendment will be required for the excision of the natural law related words “natural born Citizen” from Article II to accommodate the inclusion by amendment of positive law homosexual marriage and the elevation by amendment of natural law homosexuality, a consistent 1% to 2% of the population by recruiting through media ridicule and propaganda, to an equal status with natural law heterosexuality.

Since Prof. Amar spent so much space (pp. 241-245) on sexuality and ramifications in society of the transgender phenomenon (e.g., staying married to a spouse), I will conclude with a brief non-lawyers response (hey, I’m just one guy in El Paso, Texas – if not me, who?) to his erudite comments, he being a Yale tenured law professor and a constitutional scholar and all that implies about his erudite astuteness (whew, can I handle the stress? Yes – I write, you decide).

Neither “natural law homosexuality” (the activity) nor “natural law heterosexuality” (the activity) require a “positive law” to be actively practiced – activity is by choice alone, activity is not mandated by positive law or natural law ( the “activity” of celibacy is ONLY by choice, “mindset” – not by birth, “bodyset”). Neither homosexuality nor heterosexuality are activities determined by birth alone or by birth at all. Being male or female is by birth alone – engaging in sexual activity is by choice alone as bisexuality and the transgender phenomenon prove daily. Bisexuality and transgenderism are mindsets, not bodysets. A transgender person is exhibiting a “mindset” about the body, not a “bodyset” about the mind. Transgenderism is public proof that homosexuality is a “mindset” activity and not a “bodyset” activity. Being male or female is a “bodyset” that is not determined by a “mindset” of choice. Being male or female is, well, “being” – not choosing. Activity is “choosing” – not being.

Mario, in conclusion, if Prof. Amar is not challenged in writing and or debate his “liberty and equality” amendments to the constitution, if accepted in the classrooms of America and adopted and ratified by the people of the states, they will “transform” the original meaning of the Constitution's 1787 preamble words “posterity” and “Union.”

Art

Original-Genesis-Original-Intent.blogspot.com

(http://original-genesis-original-intent.blogspot.com/2017/06/exclusive-original-intent-vs-prof-akhil.html)

Natural Born Citizen Debates - Redux

Natural Born Citizen Debates – Redux

Mario Apuzzo, David Ramsay, Emer de Vattel

vs.

Mark Levin, Larry Solum, Robert Natelson & Akhil Amar

I also posted this on Mario Appuzo’s Natural Born Citizen blog

>> http://puzo1.blogspot.com/2016/07/carmon-elliott-files-petition-for-writ.html

Mario,

I have another suggestion for a heavy hitter “natural born citizen” debate opponent for you, Yale Law Professor Akhil Reed Amar, However, if his page 38 footnote inserted into his 2008 Slate.com essay in his last book is an indicator, you don’t stand a chance... cough, cough, of staying awake.

After the quote from my previous comment here on June 2, 2017 at 8:18 PM about Prof. Robert Natelson being added to the opposition’s natural born citizen debate roster to “clarify what he, Natelson, meant about Vattel’s clarification about “parents”, there are some comments by Yale Law Prof. Akhil Reed Amar from his 2016 book incorporating his essays, The Constitution Today – Timeless Lessons for the Issues of Our Era. My suggestion is that Prof. Amar should be included in the debate roster of those who propose that dual U.S./foreign citizenship is the original genesis original intent of Article II Section 1 clause 5and the Fourteenth Amendment, and that dual U.S./foreign citizenship is sufficient for a person to be “...eligible to the Office of President”.

To put it another way, Yale Law Prof. Amar should be included in the list of debaters against you on the side of the opposition who promote the shallow proposition that dual U.S./foreign citizenship parents, married or unmarried to each other, can produce a singular U.S. citizenship child, aka a natural born citizen, “by birth alone”. Also, to add to my debate suggestion against the proposition that dual U.S./foreign citizenship is sufficient to be eligible to be president, and contrary to Prof. Amar’s comments below (see “relevant congressional statute conferred birth-based American citizenship” in footnote 38 below), citizenship by positive law is NOT citizenship by “birth” alone and positive law should NOT be adduced in opposition to the proposition that a “natural born Citizen” is by “birth” alone and so is the ONLY U.S. citizen eligible to be president. If Levin, Solum, Natelson, and Amar will stipulate that positive law (“conferring”) is not the solution to clarifying natural law (“birth”), then the concomitant proposition follows that a “citizen” by positive law should NOT be adduced into the debate to define the meaning of “natural born Citizen” if eligibility to be president can be ONLY by “birth” alone.

My point is that all that Levin, Solum, Natelson, Amar and pinch hitters/debaters et al. need to do is persuade us today, and, in absentia of course, John Jay, George Washington, 100% of the delegates who adopted the language of the Constitution on September 17, 1787 and eventually 100% of the ratifiers of the several states, which includes ratifier John Jay from New York, that when John Jay suggested on July 25, 1787 in his note to George Washington that military “command” should not “devolve” on anyone but a “natural born Citizen”, the dual U.S./foreign citizenship is sufficient to be “...eligible to the Office of President” proponents need to clarify why Jay did NOT mean that eligibility to be president was derived exclusively by

– ONLY singular U.S. citizenship; and

– ONLY “by birth alone”; and

– ONLY by birth to two U.S. citizen married parents; and

– ONLY married to each (NOT multiple wives as with Muslims); and

– ONLY before the birth of the child.

Also, in addition to what Jay did NOT mean exclusively in 1787 America, those who oppose ONLY singular U.S. citizenship need to persuade us today in 2017 America that Jay ALSO meant (and George Washington tacitly agreed when he passed Jay’s suggestion to the convention delegates) that “natural born Citizen” also meant, or, at least, “could” have meant, as the 1790 Naturalization Act “natural born citizen” language implied until corrected by the 1795 Naturalization Act “citizen” language, that eligibility to be president could be derived by those

1 – born on U.S. soil to only one U.S. citizen parent, married or not to the reproductive partner,

OR

2 – born on foreign soil to either two OR one U.S. citizen parent, married or not to the reproductive partner,

OR

3 – born on U.S. soil to ZERO U.S. citizen parents, married or not to the reproductive partner.

Number 3 is the absurd conclusion of the U.S. citizen parents are not necessary fiat decision of the 1898 U.S. v. Wong Kim Ark court that Levin, Solum, Natelson, and Amar, who, as proponents of dual U.S./foreign citizenship, are really proposing a shallow legal assumption about the legal meaning of “natural born Citizen” in Article II Section 1 clause 5 that leads to the equally shallow conclusion that the Fourteenth Amendment is constitutional authority for plop-and-drop “anchor babies” born on U.S. soil to alien parents and U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley, Gov. Bobby Jindal, and Sen. Marco Rubio, also born on U.S. soil to alien parents, are “...eligible to the Office of President”.

Mario, all Levin, Solum, Natelson, and Amar and et al. need to do is persuade themselves first and then us that Jay was totally inclusive and not exclusive when he underlined the word “born” in his “natural born Citizen” note to Washington.

Simple, huh? That’s all they need to do.

For context about Prof. Amar, here is my previous comment about including Prof. Natelson into your debate roster.

“After posting the previous comment today (June 2, 2017 at 12:38 PM) about debates with Mark Levin and Professor Larry Solum I remembered Professor Robert Natelson, author of The Original Constitution: What It Actually Said and Meant, 3^rd Edition, published in 2014. He did not add anything to the text of the 2nd Edition published in 2011, but he did add footnote #25 about Emer de Vattel and how Vattel "clarified" what he meant by “parents”. After the quote from Natelson’s book about Emer de Vattel is your quote about David Ramsay that Natelson should be asked about to clarify what he, Natelson, meant about Vattel’s clarification.”

Now, here are some of Prof. Amar’s comments related to why a “citizen” with only one U.S. citizen parent (see page 38 footnote below) is eligible to be president. He states on pages 4 and 5 that his book is composed of his essays: “The essays are organized by subject matter so that the reader may see the larger patterns of argument that run through them. … To preserve the integrity of the historical record, I’ve used this book’s footnotes and endnotes to identify all important substantive changes.”

Mario, to me this statement about “substantive changes”, specifically his long footnote on page 38 about a “citizen” who is “...eligible to the Office of President” (my words), means that his footnote is all he thought was needed to deal with the “hullabaloo” about the “presidential eligibility” of then Senator Obama in 2008 and Senator Cruz in 2016.

Although “natural born citizen” is on page 36 in the text, the Index does not list “natural born citizen”, “natural”, “born”, or “citizen”, but it does list “citizenship rights, 406; birthright citizenship, 38(fn); detention of an “enemy combatant,” 207-208; Obama and Cruz’s presidential eligibility, 38(fn); presidential qualifications, 36, 263”. All empheses are in the original.

Page 36[-37]

– Slate essay: The Constitution and the Candidates (2008)

– presidential eligibility”

“Consider next the Constitution’s rule that the president be “a natural born citizen”—a rule that focuses not on where a person becomes a citizen, but when. To be eligible, one must be born a citizen rather than naturalized at some later date. At the Founding, a special constitutional clause provided that even those who had not been citizens at birth could nevertheless become president, if they were citizens circa 1787. Thus, Alexander Hamilton, born in the West Indies, was clearly eligible. All those already in America in 1787 could be trusted; but the framers fretted that an Old World earl or duke might someday sail across the Atlantic with a boatload of gold and bribe his way into the presidency. (Rumor had it that George III’s second son, the Bishop of Osnaburgh, would soon head this way.) Thus, the “natural-born” clause’s main target of concern was not immigrants generally, but wealthy European aristocrats who might wreak havoc in an America lacking strong campaign finance laws.

“The Constitution’s final requirement—fourteen years of U.S. residence—also focused on transoceanic travel and made clear that loyal Americans who had spent years or even decades abroad were nonetheless welcome to pursue the American presidency. (The document pointedly did not require decades of continuous and uninterrupted residence in the U.S.) ….”

[...snip… to page 37]

“Later amendments have further opened the door of eligibility. Nothing at the Founding required that state election laws give equal treatment to black or female voters or office seekers. The Constitution’s Fifteenth and Nineteenth Amendments corrected these Founding lapses, promising blacks and women the rights to vote and to be voted for as full political equals.”

Page 38 footnote

– Slate essay: The Constitution and the Candidates (2008)

– “birthright citizenship” & “Obama and Cruz’s presidential eligibility”

[After a short comment in the text about Sen. John McCain, the footnote that references the “hullabaloo” about natural born citizen – “hullabaloo” ??? – starts with “extra information for readers interested...”. A question for Prof. Amar: Is this long footnote the best that Prof. Amar, being a constitutional scholar and all that implies, like constitutional scholars Levin, Solum, and Natelson, is this footnote the best Prof. Amar can do… after eight years dealing with the “nbC” “hullabaloo”?]

[...the brackets [] below in the next paragraph are in the page 38 footnote]

“[Extra information for readers interested in the more recent hullabaloo about Obama’s birth certificate and the questions raised about Ted Cruz’s presidential eligibility: Cruz is eligible even though he was undeniably born in Canada. At the time of his birth, the relevant congressional statute conferred birth-based American citizenship on any foreign-born baby who had at least one parent who was a U.S. citizen, so long as that parent had met certain conditions of extensive prior physical presence in the United States. On the day of his birth, Cruz’s mother was a U.S. citizen, even though his father was not; and his mother also met the relevant rules of extensive prior physical presence. Why then, would Obama have been any different even if he had been born in Kenya, as has been (preposterously but repeatedly) claimed by various critics, led by Donald Trump? Like Cruz, Obama’s mother was a U.S. citizen on the day of his birth, even though, like Cruz, his father was not. And nothing in the relevant congressional statute treats a Kenyan birth as any different from a Canadian birth. The answer to this puzzle is that the congressional law on the books when Obama was born required a foreign-born child to have at least one citizen parent who had been physically present in the United States at least five years after age fourteen. Obama’s mother did not clear this bar because she was only eighteen when she gave birth. So this birth had to happen in the United States to make her son a citizen at birth. Of course this birth did in actual fact happen in the United States—in the state of Hawaii—and except for the children of foreign diplomats, anyone born these days in the United States is a birthright citizen under the Constitution itself, whether or not the baby’s parents are themselves citizens. (This birthright citizenship is the clear command of the first sentence of the Fourteenth Amendment, see pp. 240-245.) For this law on the books on Obama’s birthday, see Act of June 27, 1952, 66 Stat. 235-36; Title III, ch. 1, section 301(a)(7). For on the meaning of “natural born” see p. 42 n. 14.]”

Page 207-208

– New Republic essay: Go Directly To Jail

– “enemy combatant”

“Question 5: What difference does it make that Padilla[*] is an American?

[* Jose Padilla, aka Abdullah al-Muhajir is a U.S. citizen, and is simply being “detained” as a “soldier”. The Arabic “abdullah” means “slave of Allah”]

“…. But the government is not (yet) charging Padilla with a crime. For now, they are simply treating him as a soldier. Why should he get more rights than a typical prisoner of war simply because he may also be a criminal? Why should he get more rights than all the detainees in Guantanamo simply because, unlike the rest, if he is indeed a soldier then he has also betrayed his country (whereas the others owed America no loyalty in the first place)?”

Page 264

– Slate essay: Two and a Quarter

– “presidential qualifications”

“Consider also the way that the states elect governors—directly by the voters, one person, one vote. If the federal electoral college is so good, why does no state closely follow it? Let’s scrap it. And if naturalized Americans like California’s Arnold Schwarzenegger and Michigan’s Jennifer Granholm can be trusted to serve as governors, why not amend the federal Constitution to allow them to run for president? In fact, in 2004, the Senate held hearings on just such a proposed amendment, sponsored by Republican Senator Orrin Hatch and strongly endorsed by several congressional Democrats.”

[Soft-socialist Schwarzenegger lost California to hard-socialists and Granholm did nothing to stop the socialists from “transforming” Michigan, so they are definitely not liberty vs. tyranny role models for amendment propositions for the same commonsense reason that the BREXIT initiator of 26 years ago and 2016 BREXIT hero Nigel Farage is not a role model to “transform” America, with or without absurd amendment propositions—they are not U.S. natural born citizens by “birth” alone.]

Page 406

– Conclusion (not an essay)

– “citizenship rights”

“Simply put, the written Constitution is often wise—typically, wiser than judges acting on their own steam—because the document distills the democratic input of many minds over many generations. … Later generations of ordinary Americans mobilized to enshrine in this terse text an end to slavery, a sweeping guarantee of equal birthright citizenship, an emphatic commitment to protecting civil rights against all levels of government, and radical expansions of the rights of political participation—to blacks, to women, to the poor, to the young, and more. These were epic democratic achievements, and they are all worthy of profound respect by today’s Americans. We, the people of the twenty-first century, thus do well to ponder the collected and collective wisdom of this old and intergenerational text.”

[This is not a previous essay, but it is definitely an excellent point about the Fourteenth Amendment and “citizenship rights” - except for Prof. Amar's implication that the Fourteenth Amendment is the constitutional authority that allows plop-and-drop anchor babies, who are born on U.S. soil to parents who are not U.S. citizens, to be eligible to be president. The implication is shallow, thoughtless, irrational, and contrary to self-preservation.]

Art

Original-Genesis-Original-Intent.blogspot.com

2017-06-02

Natural Born Citizen Debates

Mario Apuzzo, David Ramsay, Emer de Vattel

vs.

Mark Levin, Larry Solum, Robert Natelson

Mario,

After posting the previous comment today (June 2, 2017 at 12:38 PM) about debates with Mark Levin and Professor Larry Solum I remembered Professor Robert Natelson, author of The Original Constitution: What It Actually Said and Meant, 3^rd Edition, published in 2014. He did not add anything to the text of the 2nd Edition published in 2011, but he did add footnote #25 about Emer de Vattel and how Vattel "clarified" what he meant by “parents”. After the quote from Natelson’s book about Emer de Vattel is your quote about David Ramsay that Natelson should be asked about to clarify what he, Natelson, meant about Vattel’s clarification.

Professor Rob Natelson

"...Vattel wrote of citizenship following "parents," at several later points he clarified that, as in England, foreign-born children followed the status of their fathers."

On pages 147-48 Natelson explains what the language of the U.S. Constitution in Article II Section 1 clause 5 "...actually said and meant"; the footnote is on page 148:

"The Constitution imposed certain qualifications on the President. The Constitution implied, although it did not state explicitly until adoption of the Twelfth Amendment, that the same qualifications applied to the Vice President. Both had to be at least 35 years old, which was a significant requirement in an age in which even people who survived childhood often did not live beyond their 50s. The idea was to better assure a certain amount of maturity and wisdom. Also, both had to have resided within the country for the previous fourteen years.

"Most importantly, the President and Vice President had to be natural-born citizens or citizens at the time of ratification. We know exactly what the founders meant by the phrase "natural-born citizen" because they adapted it from the English legal term, "natural born subject," which in Britain defined who could serve in Parliament or the Privy Council(25). Essentially, a natural-born citizen was one who met either one of two requirements. First, a person qualified if born within the United States or within American territory, even if the person's parents were aliens. Alternatively, an individual qualified even if born outside the country if the individual's father was an American citizen not then engaged in traitorous or felonious activities.

"These birth and residence requirements were designed better to assure that these officers were truly sympathetic to those they were to govern, and to guard against the risk that they might be sympathetic to a foreign power(26).

"There was no constitutional requirement that a President or Vice President be male. The pronoun "he" used throughout the Constitution was generic(27)."

__________

"(25)Since the publication of the first edition, several readers have contacted me to argue that "natural born" should be defined as Emer Vattel defined it in his international law treatise. Invariably their argument is driven by hope that Vattel's definition, if applied, would disqualify from the presidency some politician they dislike.

"The Constitution's meaning does not, however, depend on one's political hopes. The document generally employed domestic legal terms according to English usage.

As Vattel acknowledged, the English standard for "natural born" varied from the international standard with respect to children born within the country; as to children born outside the country, the rules were the same. (Although at one point in his book Vattel wrote of citizenship following "parents," at several later points he clarified that, as in England, foreign-born children followed the status of their fathers.)”

David Ramsay

Mario, here is a short snippet of your comment about David Ramsay, and the url on your blog for those who want to read it all:

>> http://puzo1.blogspot.com/2015/07/july-4-1776-birth-day-of-nation-and.html

”Here we have direct and convincing evidence of how a very influential Founder defined a natural born citizen. Noah Webster, 1828, in explaining how an American dictionary of the English language was necessary because American words took on different meanings than the same word in England, placed David Ramsay among great Founders such as “Franklin, Washington, Adams, Jay, Madison, Marshall, Ramsay, Dwight, Smith, Trumbull...”

[...snip...]

“Ramsay, being of the Founding generation and being intimately involved in the events of the time would have known how the Founders and Framers defined a natural born citizen and he told us that such a person was one born in the country to citizen parents.

“In giving us this definition, it is clear that Ramsay did not follow the English common law but rather natural law, the law of nations, and Emer de Vattel, who also defined the “natives, or natural-born citizen” the same as did Ramsay in his highly acclaimed and influential treatise, The Law of Nations, Or, Principles of the Law of Nature, Applied to the Conduct and Affairs of Nations and Sovereigns, Section 212 (1758 French) (1759 English).

”We can reasonably assume that the other Founders and Framers would have defined a natural born citizen the same way that Ramsay did, ....

[...snip...]

”It is valuable because it is evidence of the public meaning of these terms at the time they were framed and ratified."

In conclusion, Mario, for those who may wonder why the definition of natural born Citizen is so important I have very simple questions. Which words of the U.S. Constitution are NOT important? Were the words of the First Amendment intended to be temporary or perpetual? How about the Second Amendment? Was the “...the security of a free state” intended to be temporary or perpetual? Was John Jay’s statement in his note to George Washington that the “command in chief” should “devolve” ONLY on a “natural born Citizen” and “...eligibility to the Office of President” intended to be temporary or perpetual, generation to generation, election to election, POTUS to POTUS?

Well, Mario, you have written that you are ready to debate, so, Mark Levin, Larry Solum, Robert Natelson and et al., who will be the first to tap the plate? Batter up!

Art

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

OriginalBirtherDocument.blogspot.com