Talk:Citizenship Clause

message: This section in the article is highly unsatisfactory in that it gives more weight to the dissenting opinion in US v Wong than it does to the majority opinion. It leaves the impression that the dissenting opinion, that there is a question as to whether the children of transient aliens are themselves natural born citizens, was not "explicitly" contradicted by the majority and therefore remains an open question.
The fact of the matter is that the Wong majority decision gave citations of cases that do explicitly contradict the minority. It seems unreasonable that a long quote supporting the minority opinion in Wong be included and none contradicting it is given.
This is just some more of that Obama eligibility junk soiling the Wikipedia.
I'll leave this comment here for a while, and then go rewrite the section to be historically accurate.Kevin (talk) 15:25, 3 August 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: Natural-born citizens

message: I've moved the following here from the Birthright citizenship section of the article:
This seems to be making an unsupported editorial assertion similar to the following WRT at least some of these categories of persons -- particularly the final category:
Wtmitchell  (talk) (earlier Boracay Bill) 00:06, 9 January 2011 (UTC)
thread_title: Text moved here from the ''Birthright citizenship'' section

message: I'm clarifying that restrictions on the ability of the US government to strip anyone of citizenship apply only to citizenship based on the 14th Amendment, and not jure sanguinis citizenship for children of Americans born abroad, which is established only by statute.Gmalcolms (talk) 03:59, 15 February 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Loss of citizenship 

message: I have removed the inclusion of Sen. Cowan from Pennsylvania among those who supported Sen. Howard's amendment since there is no evidence from the records of the debate preserved in the Congressional Globe that he did so. In fact, his statements seem to indicate the opposite, namely, he opposed the amendment because he was opposed to granting citizenship, solely because they were born in the United States, to the children of, for example, Chinese and Gypsies. Based on his voting, one can also see that Sen. Cowan preferred Doolittle's alternative proposal, of preserving the language of the Civil Rights Act of 1866, to that of the amendment proposed by Sen. Howard.Gmalcolms (talk) 05:06, 15 February 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Senatorial debate on the Citizenship Clause 

message: It's not at all clear to me that the existing section on "Natural-born citizens" belongs in this article.  This article is not about the natural-born-citizen clause; it is about the portion of the 14th Amendment dealing with citizenship.  If natural-born citizens are to be discussed here at all, it should only be in the context of whether anything about the Citizenship Clause is relevant (as confirmed via reliable sources) to the definition of a natural-born citizen, or to the interpretation of the Natural Born Citizen Clause.  — Richwales 18:23, 23 March 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Natural-born citizens (again) 

message: I am troubled by [ these recent edits], which appear to me to give undue weight to the necessity of being "subject to the jurisdiction" of the US as a precondition for being a citizen.  That is, these edits make the text sound like the exceptions to jurisdiction may be as important as (or even more important than) the the general principle that birth in the US confers automatic citizenship.  What do others think?  — Richwales 17:52, 1 April 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: The point of "referencing" or "verifying" here is not simply to confirm the obvious fact that the Citizenship Clause contains the phrase "and subject to the jurisdiction thereof".  The point is that the interpretation and emphasis being offered by the proposed changes is something that needs to be tied to reliable sources which say that this is what the phrase means and how it is applied.  Stated another way, you need to be looking at books on the history of US constitutional law, and/or legal research articles published in recognized mainstream journals which discuss the way the Citizenship Clause has shaped legal developments in the area of birthright citizenship, and what is added to this article needs to describe material from those kinds of sources (with suitable inline citations).  — Richwales 21:23, 2 April 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: The phrase "and subject to the jurisdiction thereof" is a conditional clause that is part of the Citizenship Clause that immediately follows the phrase "All persons born or naturalized in the United States". The definition of a conditional clause in English language dictionaries and in legal dictionaries with examples such as "on condition", "on condition of", "on condition that", "dependent on", "dependent on a condition or conditions", "depending on", "contingent on", "subject to", "subject to a reveiw", "and subject to", "and subject to the approval of.....", "and subject to the.......", not absolute as in "a conditional award" etc., all express that a condition or conditions, a prerequisite or prerequisites are necessary and are required and must be met or must be fulfilled before a person can be qualified or eligible to receive the desired result. The Citizenship Clause without or excluding the conditional clause "and subject to the jurisdiction thereof" is as follows: "All persons born or naturalized in the United States are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside". And the Citizenship Clause that includes the conditional clause "and subject to the jurisdiction thereof" is as follows: "All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside". The fact that the conditional clause "and subject to the jurisdiction thereof" obviously precedes the resulting phrase "are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside" indicates that a prequisite condition or prerequisite conditions must be met or fulfilled before a person can be qualified or eligible to receive citizenship in the United States and in the State wherein that person resides. I have only pointed out the fact that the phrase "and subject to the jurisdiction thereof" is a conditional clause that indicates that there is a prerequisite condition or that there are prerequisite conditions that must be met or fulfilled before a person can be qualified or eligible to receive or to be granted citizenship regardless if that person is naturalized or born in the United States and in the State wherein that person resides. I am not attempting to state or identify what the condition is or what the conditions are that exist in the conditional clause "and subject to the jurisdiction thereof". Also, it is impossible for a universal rule or a universal law to exist if there are any type of exceptions to that rule or to that law anywhere at any time. Universal equates to absolute and without exception. Therefore the adjective, general, is a much better and a much more accurate word to describe a rule or a law that does have some exceptions to that "general rule" or to that "general law". I hope this clarifies these issues. It is shocking that there are a few people or that there are perhaps many millions of people who have not identified the phrase "and subject to the jurisdiction thereof" to be a legal conditional clause that is contained within the Citizenship Clause, which might be as a result of people attempting to define and understand the Citizenship Clause of the 14th Amendment exclusively only from a purely political and philosophical point of veiw instead of reading and understanding the Citizenship Clause in the simple and basic English language sentence structure grammatical form that the Citizenship Clause is written in.  MorrisonRemickWaite (talk) 02:18, 3 April 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: I repaired the formatting of your comment above.  (Apologies for intruding on your writing, but you had — I assume inadvertently — mangled the formatting so as to make not only your comment, but much of the rest of this section of the talk page, unreadable.)  As for your explanation for your edits, I think I understand what you are saying, but I believe this additional analysis is completely unnecessary for the average person to be able to understand what the text of the Citizenship Clause means.  You could just as validly say (or, in my opinion, not need to say at all) that "born or naturalized in the United States" is a conditional clause specifying a prerequisite that is required and must be met or fulfilled, etc., etc.  Indeed, I propose that this extra verbiage makes the text harder to read and understand, and even if it doesn't require substantiation from reliable sources, I do not believe it is necessary or appropriate.  If there is a consensus of other editors to the effect that this detailed explanation is necessary and desirable, that would be fine — but please don't put this back in simply because you (and only you) believe it belongs.  — Richwales 03:09, 3 April 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: Actually for you to accept that the adjective universal is accurate to describe a rule or a law that does have obvious exceptions, especially when universal does in fact refer exclusively only to something that is the same no matter what and absolute with no exceptions of any type, is very misleading to all readers. The adjective, general, does a much better job to much more accurately describe the fact that birthright citizenship in the Citizenship Clause is in fact not universal at all because there are some exceptions to the "general" rule or law or statute, regardless of how rare or infrequent those exceptions may occur. Also the average reader, may not understand at all that "and subject to the jurisdiction thereof" is in fact of itself a conditional clause in the truest sense of 100% correct American English sentence structure grammar that was deliberately, intentionally and purposely written as part of the Citizenship Clause. Also, the phrase "All persons born or naturalized in the United States" does not have the conditional keywords to be defined as a conditional clause in any way, shape, form or definition. I do believe it will be a disservice to all readers to refuse to include a simple modified sentence to more accurately and truthfully identify and describe the grammatically correct legal conditional clause "and subject to the jurisdiction thereof" by retaining my last grammatical explanation edit(or somthing similar) as it was posted during the last edit that I had attempted which is: [{The conditional clause "and subject to the jurisdiction thereof" within the Citizenship Clause indicates that there is a condition or conditions that must be met or fulfilled prior to granting citizenship to a child born on U.S. soil or that there are some exceptions to the general rule that birth on U.S. soil automatically grants citizenship}]. Most readers are probably not familiar with the legal importance that any conditional clause does allow for a system of checks and balances to prevent confusion and chaos. The conditional clause "and subject to the jurisdiction thereof" is an excellent example of a conditional clause that is meant to prevent confusion and chaos from occurring in an ever increasing population of citizens within the United States, so that the integrity and virtue of citizenship in the United States is maintained to be realistic, practical, sustainable, ethically fair and  morally just. What the condition is or what the conditions are is a completely different issue from identifying an obvious gramatically correct conditional clause that is an important part of the Citizenship Clause. It is probably a fact that there are only a few readers who will know and understand that "and subject to the jurisdiction thereof" is a legal conditional clause. That is very critical for readers to have an accurate and truthful understanding of the definition and the purpose of the Citizenship Clause in the 14th Amendment to the Constitution. Thank you for your time to read my reply.MorrisonRemickWaite (talk) 06:51, 3 April 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: Again, I believe the text of this part of the article is more than adequate as it stands, and I oppose making sweeping changes along the lines you are proposing.  I hope we can hear the opinions of other editors on this point, but again, I would not want to see this particular change made again unless it turns out there is a general consensus for it.  I do think it might be appropriate to change the single word "universal" in the existing text, either to "otherwise universal", or to "general", but that's about all.  And please note that I had to repair the formatting of your most recent comment — the biggest problem was that you cannot start a line of wiki-markup text with spaces.  If you want to indent material, you need to start the line with one or more colons.  Also, put your signature (four tildes) only at the end of your remarks.  I recommend you read WP:MARKUP for a description of how to write material in a Wikipedia page.  — Richwales 14:51, 3 April 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree with Richwales, but I would add that this language couldn't possibly be considered for inclusion.  At the moment it's still unreferenced original research, but the larger issue is that this is a fringe legal view occasionally espoused by those that believe the children of immigrants should not or do not become citizens at birth. That question was settled over a century ago in Lynch v. Clarke and United States v. Wong Kim Ark, yet some prefer to use semantic acrobatics to try to make the case for the opposite.  I don't know whether MorrisonRemickWaite subscribes to this novel theory, but language saying that it is "...meant to prevent confusion and chaos from occurring in an ever increasing population of citizens within the United States, so that the integrity and virtue of citizenship in the United States is maintained to be realistic, practical, sustainable, ethically fair and  morally just" would suggest that they do. In any event, it would be undue weight to include it in an encyclopedia article about the clause itself. --Loonymonkey (talk) 19:42, 3 April 2012 (UTC)

text: Thinking about it, it occurs to me that there is a second reading of this phrase. "and subject to the jurisdiction thereof" could be read as inclusive instead of conditional. An expansion of the clause in this case might read "All persons born or naturalized in the United States are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside." combined with "All persons subject to the jurisdiction of the United States are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.". This depends on how you read the clause. I think it's most commonly interpreted as "All persons born or naturalized in the United States and, at the time of birth or naturalization, were subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.". But the clause isn't written in a clear manner for either case. Reminds me of the Supreme Court's ruling in District of Columbia vs. Heller regarding the "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State," clause. That would genuinely constitute original research, but is food for thought. FA Jon (talk) 07:48, 21 February 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  Importance of the "jurisdiction" phrase 

message: Everyone please take note that I have raised a question on the Reliable Sources Noticeboard regarding the appropriateness of this New York Times article as a reliable source for the following statement about the Fourteenth Amendment: "There are varying interpretations of the original intent of Congress, based on statements made during the congressional debate over the amendment."  I believe this reference is acceptable as a source, but an IP editor has deleted it twice (see [ here] and [ here]), over [ my objection], stating in an edit summary that "these sources are editorials and, therefore, do not pass the requirements of a reliable source regardless of any other feature" — an interpretation of WP:NEWSORG which I am not comfortable with in this situation.  — Richwales (no relation to Jimbo) 02:02, 21 June 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  NY Times article on US citizenship law as an acceptable source (or not) 

message: Regarding this reversion, the term "Naturalization Clause" almost always refers to Article I, Section 8, Clause 4.  See, for example, these sources:
*Reyes, Carla. "Naturalization Law, Immigration Flow, and Policy" in Transforming America: Perspectives on U.S. Immigration, Volume 1, p. 149 (Michael LeMay ed., ABC-CLIO, 2013).
*Gershman, Gary. The Legislative Branch of Federal Government: People, Process, and Politics, p. 432 (ABC-CLIO 2008).
The library web page does not reflect common usage.  If anyone would like further reliable sources to back this up, just ask.  Incidentally, for a reversion to be appropriate, the reverted edit must actually make the article worse, and I think it definitely improves the Wikipedia article to use proper legal terminology.  Article I, Section 8, Clause 4 is often called the "Naturalization Clause" despite what the library web page says, and the Citizenship Clause rarely if ever goes by that name despite what the library web page says.Anythingyouwant (talk) 03:21, 19 March 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree with .  The two sources he cites appear, to me, to be of much better quality than the web page from a law school library.  Note, in particular, that the Gershman source quotes a SCOTUS opinion (INS v. Chadha), in which Chief Justice Burger refers to Article I, Section 8, Clause 4 as the "Naturalization Clause".  — Richwales (no relation to Jimbo) 05:53, 19 March 2015 (UTC)

text: Additionally, in Afroyim v. Rusk, both the (majority) opinion of the court and the dissent use the phrase "Naturalization Clause" in a way that unambiguously refers to Article I, Section 8, Clause 4.  I've found three law journal articles (one by notable legal scholar Garrett Epps) which also use the phrase with this same meaning.  — Richwales (no relation to Jimbo) 19:09, 19 March 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks for the additional refs.  I'll leave them out for now, since we don't want to overload the first sentence of the article with refs.  Anyway, the Wikipedia article has now been corrected.Anythingyouwant (talk) 22:40, 19 March 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: FWIW, the problem in the library web page appears to have originated with a questionable definition of "Naturalization Clause" in the current Black's Law Dictionary.  I'm trying to get a clarification from the publishers of this reference work, and I'm also trying to get the people in charge of the library web page to fix the problem at their end.  To early to tell at this stage what, if any, positive results will come from my efforts along these lines.  — Richwales (no relation to Jimbo) 23:22, 19 March 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: Good luck.  It's a for-profit dictionary so make sure we get our fair share.  :-)Anythingyouwant (talk) 23:40, 19 March 2015 (UTC)

text: Yes Ma'am or Sir, immediately as you command, it will be done.Anythingyouwant (talk) 00:45, 20 March 2015 (UTC)

text: Okay, it's now out of the lead, and into the main text of the article.  I must object to your very odd edit summary: "This is a blatant case of WP:POV...."  I have seen some stuff at Wikipedia that is way weirder than this quoted edit summary, but still, perhaps it would be appropriate for me to explicitly deny any POV here.  You seriously think it is POV-pushing to ask that this clause not be called by the name of another clause?  Sheesh.  If you really believe that, please describe what point of view I am allegedly pushing.  Is it pro-immigrant or anti-immigrant, or something else?  I would be fascinated to learn what partisan goal is served by using correct legal terminology.  Moreover, I ask you to please stop removing reliable sources that a majority of editors here at the talk page have agreed belong in this Wikipedia article.Anythingyouwant (talk) 01:01, 20 March 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: This "Naturalization Clause" mixup has apparently been in the Citizenship Clause article ever since it was [ first created in 2007].  As best I can tell, though, the phrase "Naturalization Clause" has repeatedly been used to refer only to Congress's power to "establish a uniform Rule of Naturalization" (Article I, Section 8, Clause 4 of the original text of the Constitution).  Although this is a change to the Citizenship Clause article, the appropriateness of the change (correction, really) can be very firmly substantiated; I've found Supreme Court opinions and law journal articles using the phrase "Naturalization Clause" where the context makes it absolutely clear that the phrase refers to Article I, Section 8, Clause 4, and I'll be happy to add these sources to the article if that's what is needed in order to convince people that the change should be made.  The only source I'm currently aware of that equates "Naturalization Clause" with the 14th Amendment's Citizenship Clause is Black's Law Dictionary — and although Black's is certainly a well-respected legal authority, to the best of my knowledge it doesn't cite any sources supporting this (or any other) definition, so if it comes down to Black's Law Dictionary versus two SCOTUS opinions and three or four law journal articles (at least one of which, btw, was written by Garrett Epps, a respected legal scholar and editor-in-chief of Black's Law Dictionary!), then I believe the appropriate thing for us to do is to go with what the bulk of the reliable sources say, and either ignore Black's on this one, or else indicate that it differs from the other sources but fails to explain why.  — Richwales (no relation to Jimbo) 02:08, 20 March 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: By all means, please feel free to add a footnote mentioning the discrepancy with Black's.  I would add the footnote myself, but my edition of Black's is very old.  Maybe if you quote the pertinent statement in the most recent Black's, then I can find it online and can add the footnote to this Wikipedia article about the discrepancy.Anythingyouwant (talk) 02:22, 20 March 2015 (UTC)

text: I guess I must be a super-evil POV-pusher given that I'm trying to contradict the person who started this article in 2007.....Oh wait, that was me in 2007.. I must have had totally different political views then, or something.  Ugh.Anythingyouwant (talk) 02:46, 20 March 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: The 10th edition (2014) of Black's Law Dictionary defines "Naturalization Clause" as "The constitutional provision stating that every person born or naturalized in the United States is a citizen of the United States and of the state of residence.  U.S. Const. amend. XIV, § 1. See JUS SOLI."  I haven't checked this personally (yet); it was sent to me by someone who maintains the web page which was cited in support of equating "Naturalization Clause" with the Citizenship Clause.  — Richwales (no relation to Jimbo) 02:51, 20 March 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks Rich.  I don't see it online anywhere.  Whichever of us who confirms it first can add a footnote to the Wikipedia article, I guess.  My apologies for making this inadvertent error in 2007.Anythingyouwant (talk) 02:59, 20 March 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: I laid eyes on the 9th edition of Black's Law Dictionary today (my local law library doesn't have the 10th edition yet), and I augmented the text with this source cite (in addition to several other sources illustrating the use of "Naturalization Clause" as meaning Article I, section 8, clause 4).  — Richwales (no relation to Jimbo) 04:15, 21 March 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: Well done.  If the 10th edition is radically different, and you have deliberately used the 9th for that reason, then I'm a Monkey's uncle.Anythingyouwant (talk) 04:40, 21 March 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: The 10th edition says the same thing as the 9th.  A reference librarian from the University of Washington law library sent me the text of the definition from the 10th edition, but I can't cite that as a source.  As I said, my local law library doesn't have the 10th edition yet, which is why I cited the 9th instead.  — Richwales (no relation to Jimbo) 05:10, 21 March 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: It's fine, you did an excellent job here.  (Only paranoid maniacs would conclude otherwise, which is what happened to me once at ArbCom when I cited an old version of Black's Dictionary at another article — from which I am now banned for life.)Anythingyouwant (talk) 07:13, 21 March 2015 (UTC)
thread_title: "Naturalization Clause"

message: I've enabled pending changes protection on this article.  Any edits by a new editor (or someone editing under their IP address without using an account) will not appear to the general readership of Wikipedia until/unless an administrator (or other editor who has been granted the "reviewer" right) approves the edit.
There have been multiple attempts to add to the article a quotation by Jacob M. Howard (a Senator from Michigan, and the original author of the Citizenship Clause).  I imagine the user or users in question may feel there is an attempt at censorship going on here; that is not true, and I'm going to try to explain why.
The Howard quotation is accurate to the best of my knowledge — but the way it is being inserted into the article's text is problematic.  The source being provided for this quote (14thamendment.us) appears to be a birther blog site, and it does not meet Wikipedia's standards for a reliable source.  And the claim that "This quote shows there was no intent to include illegal aliens or foreigners in this amendment" is unsourced original research — the new editor who inserted this claim along with the quote was trying to interpret the meaning or significance of the quote on his own, something we aren't allowed to do.  Instead of trying to make a point by including and explaining material directly from a primary source, we need to report on the way the primary source material (the Sen. Howard quote) is discussed and interpreted in secondary sources, such as in legal articles published in recognized journals, and/or in holdings by the US Supreme Court or other courts.  — Richwales (no relation to Jimbo) 18:57, 10 July 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Pending-changes protection; problems with quote from Senator Jacob Howard 

message: Hello fellow Wikipedians,
I have just modified  on Citizenship Clause. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
*Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20090416013437/http://www.travel.state.gov/law/citizenship/citizenship_778.html to http://travel.state.gov/law/citizenship/citizenship_778.html
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Cheers.—InternetArchiveBot (Report bug) 07:57, 25 November 2016 (UTC)
replies: text: The newly added link works.  However, the bot incorrectly placed the new link before closing italic marks and a period.  I fixed this formatting error and will report it as a bug.  — Richwales (no relation to Jimbo) 18:27, 25 November 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  External links modified 

message: Wikipedia  is  not  allowing  any  quotes  from  the  men who  wrote  the  14th Amendment,  which  is a  clear  violation  of  Wikipedia's  own  rules ! Shame  on Wikipedia ! Jurisdiction  thereof  means  not  subjects  of  foreign  powers,  we have  many  such quotes,  and Wikipedia  censors  them !47.201.182.47 (talk) 18:55, 27 June 2019 (UTC)
replies: text: It's more complicated than this.  We are required (also a Wikipedia rule) to write articles according to a neutral point of view, which (to quote this policy) means representing fairly, proportionately, and, as far as possible, without editorial bias, all of the significant views that have been published by reliable sources on a topic.  So, this article should mention Reverdy Johnson's comments from the Senate debate about the 14th Amendment, but not so prominently as to give the impression that his views carry more weight than those expressed by Lyman Trumbull and John Conness.  The article must also acknowledge that US law, at least since the Wong Kim Ark ruling in 1898, has interpreted the Citizenship Clause to include everyone born in the US, with only narrow exceptions that do not generally exclude US-born children of foreigners.  You may personally disagree with this long-standing interpretation, and you may believe Wong Kim Ark has been misunderstood or was simply wrongly decided, but we are required to give the most prominence to the prevailing view, while (to be sure) recognizing dissenting opinions and making it clear that they do not constitute the mainstream position.  — Richwales (no relation to Jimbo) 20:43, 27 June 2019 (UTC)
replies: text: I  correct  you.  The Supreme Court agreed  with  Wong  only  because  his  father  was  a  legal  immigrant  at  the  time  of Wong's  birth. Also, the quotes of Trumball and  Johnson  which I provided  must  be  included  in Wikipedia. 47.201.182.47 (talk) 01:48, 28 June 2019 (UTC)
replies: text: Johnson's comments, as it turns out, are already included in footnote 10, and Trumbull's words are in footnote 21.  As for whether the reason SCOTUS upheld Wong Kim Ark's claim to citizenship was only because his father was in the US legally, this is a matter of dispute; some experts agree with you, but others do not.  (See the section "Wong Kim Ark and children of illegal aliens" in the Wong Kim Ark article for a lengthy discussion of this point.  It may be OK for the current article (on the Citizenship Clause) to note that differences of opinion exist on this matter, but it would not be OK to say categorically that Wong Kim Ark doesn't apply to US-born children of illegal immigrants.  — Richwales (no relation to Jimbo) 02:01, 28 June 2019 (UTC)

text: And the quote you added back into the lead section just now (words of Senator Reverdy Johnson in the definition of jurisdiction) is still inappropriate, IMO, because it gives undue prominence to a specific point of view, in violation of the NPOV policy which I pointed out to you earlier.  — Richwales (no relation to Jimbo) 02:09, 28 June 2019 (UTC)
replies: text: Johnson and Trumball's  quotes  are  extremely important  and  should not  be  buried  in  little  footnotes.  They  should  be  explicitly  quoted  in  the  Wikipedia  article  where people  will  see  them. Also,  Johnson's  quote  belongs  where  I  put  it in  the  Introduction  because  it  backs  up  the  first  sentence  in  the  paragraph  and ties  it  together.47.201.182.47 (talk) 02:12, 28 June 2019 (UTC)
replies: text: Your additions along these lines have been reverted (vetoed) three times so far, by three different editors who were concerned about neutrality and undue weight.  Your latest edit is pending review by some established editor and is not yet visible to readers in general.  I am not going to revert your latest edit myself because I don't want to be accused of edit warring, but we'll see what others think.  — Richwales (no relation to Jimbo) 04:35, 28 June 2019 (UTC)
replies: text: I corrected the sentence that said no Senator disagreed, because Senator Johnson clearly did disagree. 47.201.182.47 (talk) 15:02, 28 June 2019 (UTC)
thread_title: Wikipedia  Censorship !

message: Citizenship_Clause#Birthright_citizenship:
:This type of guarantee—legally termed jus soli, or "right of the territory"—does not exist in most of Europe, Asia or the Middle East, although it is part of English common law
Even though the United States broke off from England and inherited some laws from it, per France in the American Revolutionary War it seem wrong to assume that the United States would necessarily use English interpretation over French or other European interpretations. Especially since the French Revolution followed (1789-1799) soon after the ARW (1775 to 1783).
Emer_de_Vattel#English_editions discusses how Law of Nations had been available in English since 1760 and how Ben Franklin in 1775 thanked Dumas for sending him 3 copies of it in French. Franklin:
:the circumstances of a rising State make it necessary to frequently consult the Law of Nations
The full letter can be found at https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Franklin/01-22-02-0172
This despite Vattel being an international lawyer from Sweden (not England).
Vattel wrote in Section 212:
:The Citizens are the members of the civil society; bound to this society by certain duties, and subject to its authority, they participate equally in its advantages.
:The natives, or natural-born citizens, are those born in the country, of parents who are Citizens
There is strangely no mention of Vattel or LON despite Franklin's mentioning his consulting it. Why is this?
It's not like no sources have talked about Vattel's influence:
*
Vattel mentions in https://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/vattel-the-law-of-nations-lf-ed#lfVattel_label_1646 :
:there are states, as, for instance, England, where the single circumstance of being born in the country naturalises the children of a foreigner.
Vattel writes this in a paragraph opening with "may grant to a foreigner the quality of citizen" and says "this is called naturalization". So Vattel does not acknowledge children born to foreigners as natural-born citizens, but rather, foreigners who are naturalized at birth. WakandaQT (talk) 04:21, 4 September 2020 (UTC)
replies: text: Potentially of interest, but only if you/we can find reliable sources which discuss ways in which Emerich de Vattel's work has influenced US legal history.  Note, in particular, that the Washington Post opinion piece cited here (by J. M. Opal) doesn't even mention citizenship (much less naturalization vs. natural-born citizenship), so it's not relevant to discussion of the meaning of the Citizenship Clause, the Natural-Born Citizen Clause, etc.  Even if evidence suggests that the Founding Fathers were influenced by The Law of Nations, that doesn't allow us to synthesize or extrapolate a conclusion that citizenship-related passages in the Constitution must be interpreted in keeping with de Vattel's ideas.  — Richwales (no relation to Jimbo) 05:50, 5 September 2020 (UTC)
thread_title: English common law v French or International law