Tag Archives: New York

Obots in HISTORY! William Rawle (1759 – 1836)

by Dr. Conspiracy on 02. Oct, 2009 in Citizenship, Obots in HISTORY!

rawle

William Rawle

Today I announce a new series of articles here at Obama Conspiracy Theories: Obots in HISTORY! The opening honors go to Dr. William Rawle, Lawyer, District Attorney, Judge, Legislator, Abolitionist, Historian, Federalist and Obot!

Rawle was a personal acquaintance and correspondent of George Washington, Alexander Hamilton and other framers of our country. He was a founder and first president of the Pennsylvania Historical Society. This is from his biography from the University of Pennsylvania where he served as a trustee:

…He was admitted to the Philadelphia Bar soon after his arrival in 1783, and that same year married Sarah Coates Burge….

Young Rawle quickly gained a reputation as an able attorney, eventually serving as chancellor of the Philadelphia Bar from 1822 until his death. As a Federalist he served a term in the Assembly, but found that politics were not to his liking. After his 1791 appointment by George Washington as U.S. District Attorney for Pennsylvania, Rawle handled the prosecutions stemming from the whiskey riots in the western part of Pennsylvania. He stepped down from this office in 1799. (more…)

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Drafting a definition for Natural Born Citizen (update)

by Dr. Conspiracy on 30. Sep, 2009 in Citizenship

I’m working on a definition for Natural Born Citizen to be submitted to the Urban Dictionary. The current definitions there are highly unsatisfactory and have net negative response from those who rate them.

This blog has published definitions before including:

Unfortunately my original article is far too long to fit the 1500 character limit of the Urban Dictionary, and in any case, I want something short and easy to read. So here is a draft for comment. Keep in mind that the following is just 38 characters under the limit, so I can’t add anything substantial without removing something else.

A US Circuit Court said “all persons born in the allegiance of the United States are natural-born citizens. Birth and allegiance go together.” US v. Rhodes (1866). This principle has been cited approvingly by subsequent courts including the US Supreme Court in US v. Wong Kim Ark (1898) that said:

“The 14th Amendment affirms the ancient and fundamental rule of citizenship by birth within the territory, in the allegiance and under the protection of the country, including children here born of resident aliens, … The Amendment, in clear words and in manifest intent, includes the children born within the territory of the United States, of all other persons, of whatever race or color, domiciled within the United States.” (more…)

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De Vattel appears in 1884 law review article

by Dr. Conspiracy on 22. Sep, 2009 in Citizenship

In ARE PERSONS BORN WITHIN THE UNITED STATES IPSO FACTO CITIZENS THEROF? The American Law Review (Sep/Oct 1884) George D. Collins argues that only those born in the United States whose fathers are citizens, are themselves citizens.

This find by Leo C. Donofrio should provide some some discomfit to Mario Apuzzo who has been doggedly pursuing the two-citizen-parent rule.

Mr. Collins jumps right into the topic by attacking Lynch v. Clarke (New York 1844) denying that there is a common law of the United States (although he is quite ready to adopt the Swiss philosopher Vattel in lieu of a common law). Collins seems to think de Vattel’s “The Law of Nations” represents international law rather than de Vattel’s philosophy of international law, but the facts are that de Vattel’s view of citizenship did not represent a consensus of national laws on citizenship; quite the contrary.

Finally Collins launches into racist screed against the Chinese:

Now it is evident that such persons [the Chinese] are utterly unfit, wholly incompetent, to exercise the privileges of an American citizen….

…yet under the common law rule the children of all persons, irrespective of race, who were born within the United States would be citizens. (more…)

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God Bless Orly Taitz

by Dr. Conspiracy on 05. Sep, 2009 in Orly Taitz

Orly of Arc

Orly of Arc

Orly’s web site has taken on a decidedly evangelical tone of late with two feature articles:

From Reader Bill FitzPatrick

Dear Orly: May the Good Lord Bless and Keep you safe and of sound mind for the task you are undertaking.  Just like our First  Real President George Washington knelt before his battle with the English Crown at our  country’s beginning,

and

Thank you for your prayer, America’s spiritual foundation. Good trumps evil, we will win, I just hope it happens soon, before they destroy this country and it’s [sic] economy

PRAY led by the HOLY SPIRIT TO:

1) Set an impenetrable angelic hedge of protection around District Judge David O. Carter, and attorney Orly Taitz.

2) Confound, and bind the enemy with the light of God through Christ Jesus in us, that the darkness in their false case will be completely exposed to the nation!

3) Deal swiftly when the enemy steps out of these bounds, bind their tongues.

… This is a link to George Washington’s Prayer Journal (more…)

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Searching for “natural born citizen”

by Dr. Conspiracy on 28. Aug, 2009 in Citizenship

US Constitution

US Constitution

Not many folks have spent more time than I searching the Internet and WestLaw for keywords including “natural born citizen”. You can see the results of such activity on pages like my The Great Mother of All Natural Born Citizen Quotation Pages and Tes’s SCOTUS & “Natural Born Citizen” – A Compendium. While that’s useful, finding short paragraphs with keywords is not the way to understand the subject in depth. Even those who disagree with me fall into the same pattern, for example, citing E. de Vattel without reading the chapters that follow.

To really understand what’s going on one must read those works where the subject is developed: this happens in some scholarly works, and in some imp0rtant court decisions. Here are some useful texts, by far not all.

Commenters here may suggest additions to the list.

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Reply to Cort Wrotnowski

by Dr. Conspiracy on 24. Jun, 2009 in Citizenship, Lounge

Mr. Wrotnowski send me an email, and this is my reply.

We agree that de Vattel writes eloquently espousing his view of natural law. And we agree that de Vattel was known to and likely influential in the minds of the framers of the Constitution.

That said, it would not be at all reasonable that to conclude that de Vattel’s views based on the stable Swiss society would closely fit in every respect the ideas from a fledgling frontier immigrant-driven democracy like the United States. Switzerland and the United States in the late 18th century were not the same kind of place. One had a stable population. The other needed immigrants just to keep the population from declining because of disease (at least this was the case in the southern colonies).

It would be an error to jump from the statement that de Vattel was influential to the statement that de Vattel was influential on issues of citizenship. One needs some additional evidence to make that connection and I do know where you would find that evidence. (more…)

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Response to Eligibility Primer (Part 2)

by Dr. Conspiracy on 21. Jun, 2009 in Citizenship

This is a continuation of the discussion of the June 5, 2009, article titled Obama Presidential Eligibility – An Introductory Primer by Stephen Tonchen. We resume at the end of his section 4:

In 1898, in the Wong Kim Ark case, the Supreme Court reexamined the “citizenship-by-birthplace-alone” theory, but did not decide whether it applied to natural born citizenship. The Court ruled that Mr. Ark was a citizen, but did not rule that he was a natural born citizen (SCOTUS in ‘Wong Kim Ark’).

This is a major gloss over one of the most sweeping surveys of citizenship ever appearing in US jurisprudence. The question before the court was whether Wong Kim Ark, born in California of Chinese subjects at a time when racist legislation (the Chinese Exclusion Act) prohibited the Chinese from becoming naturalized citizens, was a citizen. The Court said that he was. But in the majority opinion, the Court said a great many things of importance, specifically:

  1. Citing Smith v. Alabama, the court said that the Constitution is framed in the language of English Common Law
  2. The Court cited English Common law, saying that those born in England are natural born subjects of England, without regard for the citizenship of their parents
  3. The Court asserted the equivalence of “citizen” and “subject”.

While US v. Wong did not decide the natural born citizen question, the majority opinion leads inevitably to the conclusion that those born within the United States (except the children of ambassadors) are our natural born citizens, without regard to the citizenship of their parents. (more…)

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