On Sun, 04 Mar 2012 10:57:22 -0800, Peter Franks
wrote:

On 3/3/2012 9:09 PM, George Plimpton wrote:
Why don't you try, Mr. Justice Frankfurter: what does "natural born
citizen" mean? Just tell us by looking at the text of the Constitution,
please chortle.

You can't tell specifically what it means because it is nonspecific.
Therefore the judicial power is similarly nonspecific in this case

Huh? The judicial power is decisive. It will be as specific as the
Court chooses to make it.

, and
the ruling (opinion) is equally nonspecific/generally applicable.

Faulty premise, faulty conclusion.


The supreme Court CAN'T establish specificity where there is none.

They do it all the time. That's what their job is based upon --
deciding cases in which the Constitution is ambiguous, contradictory
(think 11th Amendment versus the 14th), or vacant (think Griswold v.
Connecticut and the 9th Amenment).


In the case of NBC, the meaning can be quickly established:

In the context of the constitution, natural born means inherent.
Therefore, an NBC child is one that is born of citizen parents. Period.

Faulty premises, faulty conclusion. Read the references in Wong Kim
Ark and in the Indiana state case, Ankeny v. Governor of the State of
Indiana.

The key question is what was the current definition of "natural born"
when the Founders wrote that line. Like practically all legal terms of
the time, it was all borrowed from English common law. The history of
the common law on this subject is somewhat contradictory, but the vast
preponderance of evidence is that it means a person who was born in
the country -- birthright citizenship, jus soli. The contradictory
claim is that it is citizenship by parentage -- right of blood, or jus
sanguinis. There are only a couple of sources that made that claim,
and they are spurious.

Jus soli for citizenship is the established law of the US. It could be
overturned by Congress, and there is an effort to do so. But as of
now, that's the law.

The birther's quack lawyers are trying to claim that common law
requires jus sanguinis to claim "natural born" status. They are
unlikely to get anywhere with that argument, given the rulings in
those two cases mentioned above and the fact that they have no
contradictory evidence from US court rulings or otherwise. The
Happersett case that they are leaning on is 1) inconclusive on the
question and 2) obiter dicta.

--
Ed Huntress