Qualifications for President and the “Natural Born” Citizenship Eligibility Requirement
ancestors to be considered “natural-born subjects within the realms of England.” As noted in Elliot’s compilation and analysis of documents related to independence,
On the same day [14th of October, 1774], Congress unanimously resolved, “that the respective colonies are entitled to the common law of England, and more especially to the great and inestimable privilege of being tried by their peers of the vicinage according to the course of that law.” They further resolved, “that they were entitled to the benefit of such of the English statutes as existed at the time of their colonization, and which they have, by experience, respectively found to be applicable to their several and local circumstances.” They also resolved, that their ancestors, at the time of their immigration, were “entitled to all the rights, liberties, and immunities, of free and natural-born subjects within the realms of England.”[1]
It is thus clear that the delegates to the First Continental Congress in 1774, among whom were several framers of the Constitution at the Federal Convention of 1787, as well as other notable “founding fathers” (including John Jay),[2] were already familiar with and employed the term “natural born” in the context of and within the understanding of British common law and statutory law concepts of the rights and privileges of citizenship.
Of relevance to any meaning and “common understanding” of the term “natural born” within the American colonies and at the time of the drafting of the Constitution is the legal treatise on the laws of England referred to as “Blackstone,” for its author William Blackstone. Published in 1765, this treatise was not only available, but was widely known to the framers at the time of the drafting of the Constitution.[3] As noted by the Supreme Court of the United States, “Blackstone’s Commentaries was widely circulated in the Colonies…,”[4] and that “undoubtedly the framers of the Constitution were familiar with it.”[5] As discussed in the earlier section of this report on the common law, Blackstone explained that “natural born” subjects in England and the American colonies included all those born “in” the lands under British sovereignty. Concerning specifically the issue of children born abroad of English subjects, Blackstone explains clearly that such children are then (in 1765) considered under the law of England as “natural born” subjects, and have been considered as such for most purposes since at least the time of Edward III (1350),
- ↑ Jonathan Elliot, The Debates in the Several State Conventions, on the Adoption of the Federal Constitution [Elliot’s Debates], Vol. I, “Gradual Approaches Towards Independence,” at 44 (2d Ed. 1836). Emphasis in original.
- ↑ Delegates to that First Continental Congress in 1774 included such framers present at the Convention of 1787 as Roger Sherman of Connecticut, William Livingstone of New Jersey, Thomas Mifflin of Pennsylvania, George Read of Delaware, George Washington of Virginia, and John Rutledge of South Carolina, as well as other notable “founding fathers,” including John Adams and Samuel Adams of Massachusetts, John Jay of New York, and Patrick Henry and Richard Henry Lee of Virginia.
- ↑ One noted historian of the American colonial era has commented on the “deep legalism” of society in colonial America “where William Blackstone’s Commentaries on the Laws of England was selling as well as it was in England.” Jack Rackove, Revolutionaries, at 68 (2010). See also Schick v. United States, 195 U.S. 65, 69 (1904), discussing Blackstone’s Commentaries: “… it has been said that more copies of the work had been sold in this country than in England….”
- ↑ Powell v. McCormack, 395 U.S. 486, 538 (1969). “Sir William Blackstone’s Commentaries on the Laws of England (1765–1769) is the most important legal treatise ever written in the English language. It was the dominant lawbook in England and America in the century after its publication and played a unique role in the development of the fledgling American legal system.” William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England, [hereinafter Blackstone], Volume I, Of the Rights of Persons (1765) (Introduction at iii).
- ↑ Schick v. United States, 195 U.S. at 69.
