Questions for Mario Apuzzo (6)
Dred Scott
Here’s a natural born thought experiment. Consider two hypothetical persons, both born on January 1, 1799 in Charleston, South Carolina.
Ezekiel Crowe was born a slave and the son of slaves. Both he and his Charleston-born parents were owned by John Rutledge, a Framer of the Constitution of the United States. Young Crowe was raised listening to anecdotes about the great Mr. Rutledge. Mr. Crowe was freed from slavery by the proclamation of Abraham Lincoln in 1863 when he was 64 years old. He served in the reconstruction legislature in South Carolina, and received a law degree from the University of South Carolina.
Otto Shicklegruber was born the son of German immigrants who arrived from Germany in 1793 and had become naturalized US Citizens. Otto’s father died of yellow fever before Otto was born and his mother died in childbirth. Because both of his parents were dead, the newborn Shicklegruber was sent back to Germany to live with grandparents. In 1857 he returned to the United States and established residence in a German speaking community in Wisconsin (Shicklegruber did not speak any English), where he lived as a loan shark.
Questions:
- Which of the two were natural born citizens of the United States on April 15, 1856? (Before the Dred Scott decision)
- Which of the two were natural born citizens of the United States on April 15, 1862? (After Dred Scott, but before the Emancipation Proclamation))
- Which of the two were natural born citizens of the United States on April 15, 1865? (After the Emancipation Proclamation, but before the 14th Amendment
- Which of the two were natural born citizens of the United States on April 15, 1870? (After the 14th Amendment)
- Which of the two were eligible to run against President Grant in 1872? (after Shicklegruber had lived in the US for 14 years)
Birthers attack DNC documents
Nancy Pelosi
This is early in the story. The Birthers.org have published an article making some serious allegations against the Democratic party, and Convention Chairwoman Nancy Pelosi in particular.
The gist of the claim is that there is a standard certification that the Democratic party sends to state election officials for their candidates for President and Vice-President. After Obama’s selection as the Party’s candidate these certifications were duly signed an notarized. So far so good. But they claim that none of them were actually sent out because the Democratic party officials (and Pelosi in particular) knew that Obama was not eligible. Unwilling to perjure themselves, they sent out an altered version that omits this key phrase:
and that the following candidates for President and Vice President of the United States are legally qualified to serve under the provisions of the United States Constitution
TheBirthers.org makes this claim:
The version which is absent any certification of constitutional standing for the office of President is the version that was filed with every state in the country, and the one used by the DNC to elect Barack Obama President. (more…)
When will the Birthers be happy?
Once again, we read a long discussion, with a rational-sounding style, laying out the facts, so it appears, about citizenship in the United States. Is it reasonable and is it true?
Our guest commentator has doubts, and responds to When will the Birthers be happy?
ARTICLE SAYS: World Net Daily, has actively covered many of these issues relating to Obama’s eligibil[i]ty over the last 8 months and have a collection of all eligib[i]lity related articles. See http://bit.ly/147bkD
RESPONSE: Interesting to note that, before the issue seemed such a potential publicity boon, WND reported that its own experts determined the COLB to be authentic:
“OBAMA’S CERTIFICATION OF LIVE BIRTH UTILIZING FORGERY EXPERTS ALSO FOUND THE DOCUMENT TO BE AUTHENTIC. The investigation also revealed methods used by some of the bloggers to determine the document was fake involved forgeries, in that a few bloggers added text and images to the certificate scan that weren’t originally there.”
WND also reported that the claims that Obama lost any hypothetical American citizenship he had as a child is not supported by US citizenship law:
“In short, the suit claims Obama was not born an American citizen; lost any hypothetical American citizenship he had as a child [ITALICS IN ORIGINAL(Editor's note: This point is not supported by U.S. citizenship law)END ITALICS]; may not now be an American citizen and even if he is, may hold dual citizenships with other countries. ….
Super American Grand Jury fizzles
Or as the Democratic Underground blog said: “BWAHA – American Grand Jury gets Chief Judge’s boot right up the ass.”
The Court said:
… grand juries are convened by the court for the district in which they sit. See FED. R. CRIM. P. 6( a)( 1). Grand jurors are also to be selected at random from a fair cross section of the district in which they are convened. 18 U.S.C. § 1861. The individuals who have made this presentment were not convened by this Court to sit as a grand jury nor have they been selected at random from a fair cross section of this district.
These self-appointed jurors fail to understand the legitimacy they lack, but more seriously they are deluded into thinking that they are somehow representative of their communities, rather than the irrational fringe.
While it was obvious from the start that the do-it-yourself grand jury movement was going nowhere, it’s nice to hear it from a judge.
Reply to Cort Wrotnowski
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…)
Defining Natural Born Citizen
Natural born citizen
While coming tantalizingly close, no US Court has ever decided the definition of “natural born citizen”. The term was not explained in the debates of the Constitutional Convention, nor the state legislatures when it was ratified, nor by individual framers in their speeches, letters or papers. Where do we go for a definition–to an 18th century Swiss philosopher–to an appeal to our shared prejudices?
The US Constitution is replete with terms that it doesn’t define: citizen, impeachment, felonies, treason, bribery, bankruptcy, warrants, grand jury and attainder. These are, however, familiar terms in the common law. The Supreme Court wrote in the case of Smith v. Alabama (1888) 124 U.S. 465:
There is no common law of the United States, in the sense of a national customary law, distinct from the common law of England as adopted by the several States each for itself, applied as its local law, and subject to such alteration as may be provided by its own statutes. . . . There is, however, one clear exception to the statement that there is no national common law. The interpretation of the Constitution of the United States is necessarily influenced by the fact that its provisions are framed in the language of the English common law, and are to be read in the light of its history. (more…)
