Some Obama birth records made public for years

pineinthegrass wrote: So far as I know, the President and Vice President are required by the Constitution (Article 2 and 12th Admendment) to be natural born citizens.

But members of Congress don't have such a strict requirement and can even be naturalized citizens.

So it seems there would be an interesting constitutional conflict if some day the President and Vice President were incapacited and the Speaker of the House became President. What if the Speaker were a naturalized citizen, or did not meet other constitutional requirements to be President?

Just wondering...

Then the presidency would simply pass to the next in line. There is a whole long list of who is in line for the presidency.

I WANT biden!!!!

Remember that conservative push awhile back when Schwarzenegger was considered as a possible Republican candidate for president? The one to allow naturalized citizens to run for President?

pineinthegrass wrote: So far as I know, the President and Vice President are required by the Constitution (Article 2 and 12th Admendment) to be natural born citizens.

But members of Congress don't have such a strict requirement and can even be naturalized citizens.

I'm not sure..

Congress:

Clause 2. No person shall be a Representative who shall not have attained to the Age of twenty-five Years, and been seven Years a Citizen of the United States, and who shall not, when elected, be an inhabitant of the State in which he shall be chosen.

President:

No person except a natural born citizen, or a citizen of the United States, at the time of the adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the office of President; neither shall any person be eligible to that office who shall not have attained to the age of thirty-five years, and been fourteen years a resident within the United States.

So why did they put in you have to be 35 years of age and a resident within the U.S. for 14 years?

I guess they didn't want teenagers or ex-pats.

Be sure kresspin - there is indeed a different citizenship standard for the executive and the Congress. Those elected to Congress must be citizens, but they may be natural born citizens, citizens or naturalized citizens.

Despite the quoting of the US Code, what is conspicuously absent is the term used in the Constitution in any of the sections that LJ was so kind as to provide us with. Thus the question remains unanswered by the US Code as to what, exactly, is a "natural born" citizen. It isn't unanswered mind you, but the answer isn't to be found in the US Code, it is to be found in the writings of the period in which the document was written, specifically the writings of Emmerich de Vattel in his work entitled "The Laws of Nations or the Principles of Natural Law" in 1758. You will find in those writings much of what was included in the arguments put forth in the Declaration of Independence as well as the Constitution itself.

In Book 1, Chapter 19, Subsection 212 says this:

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

Emphasis is mine. Note the use of the plural, not the singular, in the emboldened passage. The end of the passage tells us that paternal heritage determines citizenship, or being of the country. Natural born citizenship, on the other hand, requires both parents, not simply one, to be citizens themselves.

There is a distinction between being a national, a citizen and a natural born citizen kresspin. While we may today include the maternal lineage along with the paternal lineage for determination of citizen, as the writers of the Constitution would have defined the term only a person born to two parents who were citizens would qualify under the definition of being a natural born citizen.

If you are interested in reading the work of Vattel, it can be found online here:
http://www.lonang.com/exlibris/vattel/

Only Arthur and Obama, not including those who qualified by the exception of being citizens at the time the Constitution was adopted, had a parent who was not themselves a citizen at the time of their birth - and for both of them it was their father who was not a citizen. Arthur's father, however, would have been a perpetual inhabitant who had received the ability to be a perpetual resident of the nation. According to Vattel, in Book 1, Chapter 19, Subsection 213, "These are a kind of citizen of an inferior order" - but they would properly be understood to still be a citizen of sorts and their children among those understood to be citizens. Such is not the case for the father of the current executive.

The 1898 SCOTUS ruling in US v Wong Kim Ark follows this reasoning as well. Wong Kim's parents were both Chinese subjects who had been granted perpetual residency by the state, though the laws, in accordance with the treaty with the Chinese nation at the time, prevented them from becoming naturalized citizens of the US themselves. They were at the time of his birth living within the nation as perpetual residents of it and with the blessings of the nation. They had been granted entry and were to be allowed to reside here for as long as they wished to do so. That is why their son was properly "as much a citizen as the natural-born child of a citizen, and by operation of the same principle." according to the ruling of the court. But even here the court does not say that the natural born child of a citizen is a natural born citizen - only that Wong Kim was as much a citizen as someone who had been born to a citizen.

Despite what anyone opines, the term natural born citizen remains undefined within our jurisprudence and our laws. Citizen is defined, national is defined, but natural born citizen is not. That is what makes for the healthy debate about what each of us believes that term to mean. I side with Vattel - that both parents must themselves be citizens in order for their child to be a natural born citizen. The child born to parents of whom only one is a citizen is indeed a citizen, but not one who is a natural born citizen. The child born to parents of whom neither is a citizen is only a citizen if their parents are perpetual residents who have been granted that perpetual residency by the country in which they are currently residing.

Look into the history of the debates that brought us the Constitution kresspin. Look at the history of the laws, and the philosophy which shaped the views that supported the appeal to the nations that the colonies were and of right ought to be free and independent States and should hold the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature entitled them. The Laws of Nations or the Principles of Natural Law were instrumental in formulating the reason for our separation from our sovereign and contributed greatly to the foundation upon which the Constitution was written. The history is important kresspin.

There you go again... Quoting documents from the 18th century and ignoring 230 years of settled-law and decisions since then...

How quaint...but mostly irrelevant...

kresspin wrote: So why did they put in you have to be 35 years of age and a resident within the U.S. for 14 years?

They didn't want the polluted ideas of government from Europe infecting this nation. They didn't want this nation to be "like England" or "like France" or like any other nation where a single entity held all power of governance. This form of government was uniquely that of this nation and they wanted to be sure that only those who recognized the inherent supremacy of this form of government would ever be the executive of it. It was thought that once exposed to this vastly superior form of republican rule for an extended period of time that any other form would be instantly recognized for the inferior form that it was and rejected outright. They wanted to be sure that any executive would have lived here for a sufficient length of time for this form of governance to be held sacred in the bosom of the executive. That is why a citizen was not sufficient, it must be a natural born citizen - the child of two citizens who would love this nation above all others, who would seek to defend this nation with the same pledge of life, fortune and sacred honor as those who created it had done.

LadyJazzer wrote: There you go again... Quoting documents from the 18th century and ignoring 275 years of settled-law and decisions since then...

How quaint...but mostly irrelevant...

Show me one instance, just one, from the last 230 years of laws and jurisprudence of this nation where the term "natural born citizen" is defined with equal clarity LJ. Show all of us that this wasn't where the term originated and that it isn't the meaning contained by the use of that very same phrase in our Constitution. Show me one law, one SCOTUS decision, which clearly defines "natural born citizen".

On every question of construction let us carry ourselves back to the time when the Constitution was adopted, recollect the spirit manifested in the debates, and instead of trying what meaning may be squeezed out of the text, or invented against it, conform to the probable one in which it was passed.

Thomas Jefferson - 1823

I already posted a link to the U.S. code that specifically deals with it. If you wish it ignore it and stay with your Federalist interpretations, it's okay by me... But there is already 110+ years of law on the books surrounding the 14th Amendment, and choosing to ignore it is rather silly. Where the term "originated" and how it is now interpreted after 230 years of settled law are obviously two different things.

Another source for the same material: http://law.justia.com/codes/us/title8/8usc1401.html


Edited to add: And while this is an interesting discussion to debate how many microbes are on the head of a pin, it's irrelevant to the OP because Obama IS a natural-born citizen. [yawn] :Snooze