T he standing qualifications to be President of the United States are set out in the Constitution, at Article II, Section 1, clause 5, and state three specific requirements: one must be at leas t 35 years old, a resident "within the United States" for 14 years, and a "natural born Citizen." The constitutional provision states as follows: 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. Questions from time-to-time have arisen concerning whether one who is a U.S. citizen "at birth" because of the operation of federal law , is also a "natural born" citizen for purposes of the presidential eligibility clause. Such questions often concern persons born abroad to parents who are U.S. citizens, or persons born abroad when only one parent is a U.S. citizen who had resided in the United States. Although such individuals born abroad may clearly be U.S. citizens "at birth" by statute, would such persons also be "natural born Citizens," or is eligibility to the Presidency limited only to "native born" citizens? Additionally, questions have been recently raised by some as to whether one born "in" the United States of one or more alien parents—and who is thus clearly a U.S. citizen "at birth" by the Fourteenth Amendment, as well as by federal law and common law—was intended to be considered a "natural born" citizen for purposes of the presidential eligibility clause. The Constitution does not define the term "natural born Citizen," nor are the notes from the debates at the Constitutional Convention of 1787 instructive as to any specific collective intent of the framers concerning the meaning of the term. Furthermore, the Supreme Court has never needed to address this particular issue within the specific context of a challenge to the eligibility of a candidate under Article II, Section 1, clause 5, the only place in the entire Constitution that the phrase appears, although federal courts have discussed the concept extensively with respect to other issues of citizenship. Consequently, although there are numerous Supreme Court cases, as well as other federal and state case law, discussing the phrase and its meaning from which conclusions may be drawn, there has still been certain speculation on the scope of the language. According to the Supreme Court, words and phrases used, but not defined, within the Constitution, should generally "be read in light of British common law," since the U.S. Constitution is "framed in the language of the English common law." Although the English common law is not "binding" on federal courts in interpreting the meaning of words or phrases within the Constitution, nor is it necessarily to be considered the "law" of the United States (as it is for the individual states specifically incorporating it), it can be employed to shed light on the concepts and precepts within the document that are not defined there, but which are reflected in the corpus of British law and jurisprudence of the time. As noted by Chief Justice (and former President) Taft, writing for a unanimous Supreme Court, the framers of the U.S. Constitution "were born and brought up in" the English common law, they "thought and spoke in its vocabulary," and that English common law was thus what the "statesmen and lawyers of the Convention" employed for the meaning of the terms in the Constitution "confident that they could be shortly and easily understood." The term "natural born" in the context of citizenship appears to derive from the British concept that those born with a "natural liege" (allegiance, tie, or connection) to the nation or to the sovereign, were (under English terminology) "natural born" subjects under the law in England and in the American colonies at the time of independence. There appears to be little scholarly debate that the English common law at the time of independence included at least all persons born on the soil of England ( jus soli , that is, "law of the soil"), even to alien parents, as "natural born" subjects (unless the alien parents were diplomatic personnel of a foreign nation, or foreign troops in hostile occupation). As noted by the Supreme Court of the United States, this "same rule" was applicable in the colonies and "in the United States afterwards, and continued to prevail under the Constitution" with respect to "natural born" U.S. citizenship. Although the British common law at the time of independence with regard to jus soli was apparently clear, there were varying opinions as whether those born abroad of English subjects were "natural born" subjects under the common law , or were considered "natural born" subjects merely by long-standing statutory law. Some commentators have claimed that the statutory provisions of English law, first appearing during the reign of Edward III in 1350, were "incorporated" into, or in the alternative, "reflected" the already established English common law. Regardless of the technical state of the common law in England with respect to children born abroad, however, there appear to be significant arguments that the corpus of English law applicable within the American colonies, known to the framers and adopted in the states, was broader than merely the "law of the soil." Legal commentators have contended that the body of English law carried forward in the United States relating to citizenship included both the strict common law notion of jus soli , as well as that part of the law of descent ( jus sanguin i s ) included in long-standing British law (including as "natural born" subjects those born abroad of an English father), and that this was part of the "common understanding" of the term "natural born" to the framers at the time of the drafting of the Constitution. Considering the history of the constitutional provision, the clause's apparent intent, the English common law expressly applicable in the American colonies and in all of the original states, the common use and meaning of the phrase "natural born" subject in England and the American colonies in the 1700s, and the subsequent action of the first Congress in enacting the Naturalization Act of 1790 (expressly defining the term "natural born citizen" to include those born abroad to U.S. citizens), it appears that the most logical inferences would indicate that the phrase "natural born Citizen" would mean a person who is entitled to U.S. citizenship "by birth" or "at birth." Such interpretation, as evidenced by over a century of American case law, would include as natural born citizens those born in the United States and subject to its jurisdiction regardless of the citizenship status of one's parents, and would also appear to include those born abroad of one or more parents who are U.S. citizens (as recognized by statute), as opposed to a person who is not a citizen by birth and is thus an "alien" required to go through the legal process of naturalization to become a U.S. citizen. The weight of scholarly legal and historical opinion, as well as the consistent case law in the United States, also supports the notion that "natural born Citizen" means one who is a U.S. citizen "at birth" or "by birth." The Constitution of the United States of America, Analysis and Interpretation , notes that "[w]hatever the term 'natural born' means, it no doubt does not include a person who is 'naturalized,'" and, after discussing historical and legal precedents and arguments, concludes that "[t]here is reason to believe ... that the phrase includes persons who become citizens at birth by statute because of their status in being born abroad of American citizens." The particular clause concerning presidential eligibility and citizenship was placed in the Constitution and approved at the Convention of 1787 with no debate, objection, or comment. The five-person Committee of Detail, appointed by the Convention delegates to report a draft Constitution containing issues and items agreed upon by the Convention up to that point, was instructed by the Convention, on July 26, 1787, to consider provisions requiring certain qualifications for Congress and the Presidency. Although the subsequent report on August 6 from the Committee of Detail contained qualifications for Senator and Representative, it did not offer qualifications for President. On August 20, the Convention adopted a motion by Mr. Gerry of Massachusetts that the "Committee be instructed to report proper qualifications for the President ...," and on August 22, the Committee of Detail reported its recommendation that several additions be made to the report it had made, including the following concerning the qualifications of the President: "[H]e shall be of the age of thirty five years, and a Citizen of the United States, and shall have been an Inhabitant thereof for Twenty one years." The report of the Committee of Detail was then "considered" and "postponed" on August 22, so "that each member might furnish himself with a copy." In the subsequent days, the provisions for the qualifications of President were not taken up and thus not agreed upon by the whole Convention, and on August 31, 1787, the delegates agreed to "refer such part of the Constitution as have been proposed, and such parts of reports as have not been acted upon to a Committee of a Member from each State," which has been referred to as the (third) "Committee of Eleven," or the "Committee on Postponed Matters."