Why does the U.S. constitution have a natural born Citizen clause?
The U.S. constitution at Article II, Section 1, Clause 5 acknowledges two kinds of U.S. Citizens: natural born Citizens and (naturalized) Citizens of the United States. As I explained in a previous essay on natural born Citizen status, which you can read here, these two separate classes of U.S. citizens have different sources, sovereigns, duties and rights. These classes of citizens derive respectively from the natural law jurisdiction and the positive law jurisdiction of the U.S. constitution.
The citizenship of natural born Citizens is natural – the product of natural reproduction. As will be explained below, natural born Citizens gain their political rights through their biological citizen fathers. As natural citizens, they are, in fact, facts of Nature that are logically and scientifically provable in the science of law, called jurisprudence.
In contrast, Citizens of the United States are artificial citizens who are unnaturally created by Congress and whose political rights are derived from Congress. Such citizenship can be granted by Congress at birth or after birth. According to Bouvier's Law Dictionary (1856), a (naturalized) Citizen of the United States “has all the rights of a natural born citizen except that of being eligible as president or vice-president of the United States.”
This difference in source (natural reproduction v. Congress), basis (father v. mother & soil) and type of citizenship (natural born v. naturalized, adopted, artificial) play out in Congress' constitutional citizenship statutes. These provisions are constitutional because they follow the separation of powers as defined by the U.S. Constitution. An example of this is 8 USC 1409, which addresses the citizenship of children when born to either a U.S. mother or U.S. father out of wedlock in a foreign country.
In the case of a child born abroad to an unwed U.S. mother, 8 USC 1409(c) shows that this child is a (naturalized) Citizen of the United States at birth. This is because Congress bestows citizenship upon that child, which Congress may do under its powers of naturalization at Article 1, Section 8, Clause 4. Thus, citizenship bestowed by Congress upon the child of an unwed U.S. mother abroad is naturalized citizenship.
In the case of a child born to an unwed U.S. father, 8 USC 1409 (a) shows 1) that the citizenship of this child is not bestowed by Congress, and 2) that citizenship is not granted automatically at birth under Congress' powers of naturalization. Instead, Congress looks to the father to legitimate the child as a U.S. citizen. Legitimation means to place "a child born out of wedlock in the same legal position as a child born in wedlock."
Congress does this so as to not violate the natural jurisdiction of U.S. fathers under the U.S. constitution to secure the natural political rights of their children as natural born Citizens. If an unwed U.S. father fails to do this properly during the child's minority under 8 USC 1409(a), then the power of the father to convey natural citizenship lapses. This was upheld in Nguyen v. INS (2001)
Imagine a child who is born to an unwed U.S. mother and U.S. father in a foreign jurisdiction, to which 8 USC 1409 applies. Under 8 USC 1409(a), the U.S. government looks to the U.S. father to create a citizen, i.e., a natural born Citizen, through the process called legitimation. If the father fails to legitimate the child within eighteen years, then the U.S. government looks to the U.S. mother as the criteria to naturalize the child under 8 USC 1409(c) or under 8 USC 1401.
Thus, the rights of citizenship pass through the U.S. father, and in the absence of such a father (or such father's actions to legitimate their children), then Congress grants citizenship to the children of U.S. mothers at birth. Such naturalization is based on eye-witness testimony (in the form of a birth certificate), upon which natural citizenship from the father may not be based.
A certificate of naturalization is available from the U.S. government, but not a certificate of natural born status. This is because only the father, who is in charge of the natural political jurisdiction, can certify the natural born Citizen status of a child. This is normally achieved through marriage to the child's mother (who can be from any country), or can be achieved through legitimation as defined at 8 USC 1409(a).
So, under U.S. statutory law, the U.S. government defers to the natural source of natural citizens, i.e., the U.S. father, to create natural born Citizens. However, when the father fails through either marriage or legitimation to adopt his children into the political society, then Congress awards naturalized citizenship based on the mother's U.S. nationality (or on U.S. soil birth).
This is how natural born Citizenship and naturalization at birth work among U.S. citizen mothers and fathers, but why? Why are natural born Citizens created as they are to be the exclusive pool from which Presidents and Vice Presidents are chosen? What makes them so special?
To answer the latter question, I would first rephrase it. It is not natural born Citizens who are so special, but instead the republican form of government that their forefathers created for them. As this essay will show, natural born Citizens are defined as the products of citizen fathers in order to secure the republican form of government. The republican form is a natural and objective form of government, which is promised to states (and therefore their citizens) in the U.S. constitution. It is a government based on Nature and natural science, and not on religion.
Because the opposite of a republic is a non-republic (such as a monarchy or dictatorship), then non-republics are governments that are not based on natural science, but instead religion. This religion can take the form of divine appointment, such as in a monarchy, but all non-republics are religious by nature because they idolize the laws of man instead of the laws of Nature.
For example, instead of prosecuting crimes that are objectively defined, i.e., by injury, non-republics define crime subjectively. Instead of justice based on natural criteria, it is dispensed upon a supernatural criteria, i.e., that one person or political body can determine the rights of everyone else. These outrageous claims of non-republics are idolatrous to the republican form of government because they worship non-science, subjectivity and the supernatural.
The sole reason for a) the natural born Citizen clause and for b) the recognition of father-based natural citizenship in the U.S. constitution is to prevent American governments from becoming non-republican, e.g., monarchical or dictatorial. In essence, it is to prevent a government based on subjectivity and supernatural claims of power.
The non-republican form of government is where the sovereign (be it a king or legislature) grants all of the citizenship rights to its citizen-subjects. To avoid this, the U.S. constitution places the power of citizenship in the father so that Congress (or a monarch) does not control native citizens' political rights, and so that political power and rights do not emanate from the government, but instead from Nature or from a natural political source (male citizens).
Because the father's jurisdiction is natural, and is opposite and opposed to the artificial naturalization power of Congress, then natural citizenship rights are not subject to Congress. Natural born Citizens are U.S. citizens who are born apart from and therefore not beholdened to Congress. This is in contrast to Citizens of the United States, who owe their political rights and duties to Congress. This is also in contrast to citizen-subjects in all non-republics, whose citizen-subject status is a bestowed privilege, instead of a natural right. In an American republic, natural citizenship is a natural right.
So, the reason that natural citizenship derives from natural fathers in a natural jurisdiction is to prevent native citizens from being subjects of or subject to an artificial jurisdiction, such as that of a monarch or non-republican legislature, whose power is supernatural and dispensed subjectively. So we have natural citizenship ONLY to secure us from the unnatural and unprovable claims by kings and dictators. Thus understanding natural citizenship, as conveyed by the males of society, is essential for the preservation of the republican form of government.
The U.S. constitution maintains a citizenship jurisdiction where the father is in charge so that a king cannot be. Likewise, the U.S. constitution maintains a criminal jurisdiction where prospective victims of crime have primary subject matter jurisdiction. In other words, both crime and citizenship are issues of subject matter jurisdiction in a republic. Natural citizenship is the subject matter jurisdiction of citizen fathers. Crime is the primary jurisdiction of prospective victims. In a republic, a king defines neither citizenship nor criminal jurisdiction.
This constitutional citizenship scheme does not disparage women or U.S. mothers. (In Nguyen v. INS (2001), the U.S. father claimed the scheme disparaged him.) Both U.S. men and women have the natural right to create natural citizens anywhere in the world. However, because of their biological differences, and the nature of political society, they exercise this right differently.
U.S. fathers secure the natural born Citizen status of their children by being married to the mother or by legitimation. Because there are no witnesses to their role in creating citizens, Nature requires men to claim their offspring into the political society.
In contrast, U.S. mothers secure natural born Citizen status for their children by marrying the U.S. father. Outside of marriage to a U.S. father, U.S. mothers convey only naturalized U.S. citizenship, which is the mother's fail-safe citizenship for her children. Naturalization laws are meant to secure citizenship rights for children of women, in spite of what men do. These citizens who are naturalized at birth because of their mother or because of their place of birth have all the rights of natural born Citizens, except the natural right to run for President. That natural political right is conveyed solely by the father.
The jurisdiction of natural born Citizens is truly remarkable. Because they are natural citizens, who gain their political authority from their fathers, they naturally owe no positive law duties to government. Congress does not legislate over natural born Citizens, but only over Citizens of the United States. Congress recognizes the jurisdiction of natural born Citizens (not to be subject to legislation), recognizes the criminal jurisdiction of natural persons, and recognizes the citizenship jurisdiction of U.S. citizen fathers by not legislating positive law inconsistently with these natural jurisdictions. For example, 8 USC 1409(c) portrays Congress' power to make naturalized citizens, while 8 USC 1409(a) portrays U.S. fathers' power to make non-naturalized (natural) ones. This fulfills the separation of powers between the father (who is sovereign over natural citizenship) and Congress (who is sovereign over naturalized citizenship) in citizenship matters.
The citizens that Congress makes owe Congress their political rights, whereas natural born Citizens do not. Natural citizens, who after all are natural persons, only owe natural duties to each other. Their willful or irresponsible violation of others' natural rights subjects them to the law jurisdiction of judicial courts. Ultimately, natural born Citizens are born free of everything but parental- and self-government, and subject themselves to the common government only 1) by injuring others or 2) by entering government's commercial jurisdiction called equity. (Income taxation, public education, and all government benefits operate under equity, which is a jurisdiction into which free citizens voluntarily enter at their peril.)
This separation of self-government from common government is only obtainable in a republican form of government. Such governments recognize that the People delegate some of their power to government, but reserve others, which are called natural rights. Non-republics do not respect anyone's rights because politburos or monarchs define these rights, instead of Nature. Keeping the definition of crime and citizenship out of the unnatural power of kings and politburos is essential for the republican form of government.
The United States' father-centric scheme of citizenship, i.e. to provide a natural jurisdiction where citizens' rights are not subject to legislatures, may not bode well in today's politically correct society. However, paraphrasing the Supreme Court in Minor v. Happersett (1875) which denied women the right to vote, it is“certainly now too late to contend that a government is not republican” because U.S. female citizens do not convey natural citizenship (but instead secure it by marriage to a U.S. father) In the thousands of years of republican governments, the rights of citizenship have always followed the father. It's one of the ways that republican governments keep would-be monarchs and emperors at bay.
Unless citizenship follows the father (who has jurisdiction over it), then the power to convey citizenship and rights rests solely in the government, which would make the government non-republican. Thus, Americans have this patriarchal scheme merely to prevent us from being a non-republic, and to prevent citizens from being subjects of monarchs, who convey all political rights. Under this wonderful scheme, natural born Citizens get all our political rights from our fathers (and not from a king or Congress), and those without U.S. fathers (but with U.S. mothers or soil birth) gain ALL the citizenship rights of natural born Citizens except the right to run for President or Vice President.
When the U.S. installs a “President” who is a Citizen of the United States, or allows Citizens of the United States to run for President, instead of just natural born Citizens, then both citizenship law and the republican form of government fail. Representative government fails because, according to the U.S. constitution, an artificial citizen cannot represent a natural one. It is religion to equate the two types of citizens.
Citizenship and justice in republics are naturally and objectively defined by natural science instead of by religious dogma. In such a republic, a President's eligibility is scientifically provable and natural born Citizens are facts of Nature, instead of religious opinions.
The 1st Amendment prohibits such a religious government that is not established on Nature (including logic) and natural science. It is idolatry in a republic to worship man as the source of political rights instead of Nature.
The citizenship of natural born Citizens is natural – the product of natural reproduction. As will be explained below, natural born Citizens gain their political rights through their biological citizen fathers. As natural citizens, they are, in fact, facts of Nature that are logically and scientifically provable in the science of law, called jurisprudence.
In contrast, Citizens of the United States are artificial citizens who are unnaturally created by Congress and whose political rights are derived from Congress. Such citizenship can be granted by Congress at birth or after birth. According to Bouvier's Law Dictionary (1856), a (naturalized) Citizen of the United States “has all the rights of a natural born citizen except that of being eligible as president or vice-president of the United States.”
This difference in source (natural reproduction v. Congress), basis (father v. mother & soil) and type of citizenship (natural born v. naturalized, adopted, artificial) play out in Congress' constitutional citizenship statutes. These provisions are constitutional because they follow the separation of powers as defined by the U.S. Constitution. An example of this is 8 USC 1409, which addresses the citizenship of children when born to either a U.S. mother or U.S. father out of wedlock in a foreign country.
In the case of a child born abroad to an unwed U.S. mother, 8 USC 1409(c) shows that this child is a (naturalized) Citizen of the United States at birth. This is because Congress bestows citizenship upon that child, which Congress may do under its powers of naturalization at Article 1, Section 8, Clause 4. Thus, citizenship bestowed by Congress upon the child of an unwed U.S. mother abroad is naturalized citizenship.
In the case of a child born to an unwed U.S. father, 8 USC 1409 (a) shows 1) that the citizenship of this child is not bestowed by Congress, and 2) that citizenship is not granted automatically at birth under Congress' powers of naturalization. Instead, Congress looks to the father to legitimate the child as a U.S. citizen. Legitimation means to place "a child born out of wedlock in the same legal position as a child born in wedlock."
Congress does this so as to not violate the natural jurisdiction of U.S. fathers under the U.S. constitution to secure the natural political rights of their children as natural born Citizens. If an unwed U.S. father fails to do this properly during the child's minority under 8 USC 1409(a), then the power of the father to convey natural citizenship lapses. This was upheld in Nguyen v. INS (2001)
Imagine a child who is born to an unwed U.S. mother and U.S. father in a foreign jurisdiction, to which 8 USC 1409 applies. Under 8 USC 1409(a), the U.S. government looks to the U.S. father to create a citizen, i.e., a natural born Citizen, through the process called legitimation. If the father fails to legitimate the child within eighteen years, then the U.S. government looks to the U.S. mother as the criteria to naturalize the child under 8 USC 1409(c) or under 8 USC 1401.
Thus, the rights of citizenship pass through the U.S. father, and in the absence of such a father (or such father's actions to legitimate their children), then Congress grants citizenship to the children of U.S. mothers at birth. Such naturalization is based on eye-witness testimony (in the form of a birth certificate), upon which natural citizenship from the father may not be based.
A certificate of naturalization is available from the U.S. government, but not a certificate of natural born status. This is because only the father, who is in charge of the natural political jurisdiction, can certify the natural born Citizen status of a child. This is normally achieved through marriage to the child's mother (who can be from any country), or can be achieved through legitimation as defined at 8 USC 1409(a).
So, under U.S. statutory law, the U.S. government defers to the natural source of natural citizens, i.e., the U.S. father, to create natural born Citizens. However, when the father fails through either marriage or legitimation to adopt his children into the political society, then Congress awards naturalized citizenship based on the mother's U.S. nationality (or on U.S. soil birth).
This is how natural born Citizenship and naturalization at birth work among U.S. citizen mothers and fathers, but why? Why are natural born Citizens created as they are to be the exclusive pool from which Presidents and Vice Presidents are chosen? What makes them so special?
To answer the latter question, I would first rephrase it. It is not natural born Citizens who are so special, but instead the republican form of government that their forefathers created for them. As this essay will show, natural born Citizens are defined as the products of citizen fathers in order to secure the republican form of government. The republican form is a natural and objective form of government, which is promised to states (and therefore their citizens) in the U.S. constitution. It is a government based on Nature and natural science, and not on religion.
Because the opposite of a republic is a non-republic (such as a monarchy or dictatorship), then non-republics are governments that are not based on natural science, but instead religion. This religion can take the form of divine appointment, such as in a monarchy, but all non-republics are religious by nature because they idolize the laws of man instead of the laws of Nature.
For example, instead of prosecuting crimes that are objectively defined, i.e., by injury, non-republics define crime subjectively. Instead of justice based on natural criteria, it is dispensed upon a supernatural criteria, i.e., that one person or political body can determine the rights of everyone else. These outrageous claims of non-republics are idolatrous to the republican form of government because they worship non-science, subjectivity and the supernatural.
The sole reason for a) the natural born Citizen clause and for b) the recognition of father-based natural citizenship in the U.S. constitution is to prevent American governments from becoming non-republican, e.g., monarchical or dictatorial. In essence, it is to prevent a government based on subjectivity and supernatural claims of power.
The non-republican form of government is where the sovereign (be it a king or legislature) grants all of the citizenship rights to its citizen-subjects. To avoid this, the U.S. constitution places the power of citizenship in the father so that Congress (or a monarch) does not control native citizens' political rights, and so that political power and rights do not emanate from the government, but instead from Nature or from a natural political source (male citizens).
Because the father's jurisdiction is natural, and is opposite and opposed to the artificial naturalization power of Congress, then natural citizenship rights are not subject to Congress. Natural born Citizens are U.S. citizens who are born apart from and therefore not beholdened to Congress. This is in contrast to Citizens of the United States, who owe their political rights and duties to Congress. This is also in contrast to citizen-subjects in all non-republics, whose citizen-subject status is a bestowed privilege, instead of a natural right. In an American republic, natural citizenship is a natural right.
So, the reason that natural citizenship derives from natural fathers in a natural jurisdiction is to prevent native citizens from being subjects of or subject to an artificial jurisdiction, such as that of a monarch or non-republican legislature, whose power is supernatural and dispensed subjectively. So we have natural citizenship ONLY to secure us from the unnatural and unprovable claims by kings and dictators. Thus understanding natural citizenship, as conveyed by the males of society, is essential for the preservation of the republican form of government.
The U.S. constitution maintains a citizenship jurisdiction where the father is in charge so that a king cannot be. Likewise, the U.S. constitution maintains a criminal jurisdiction where prospective victims of crime have primary subject matter jurisdiction. In other words, both crime and citizenship are issues of subject matter jurisdiction in a republic. Natural citizenship is the subject matter jurisdiction of citizen fathers. Crime is the primary jurisdiction of prospective victims. In a republic, a king defines neither citizenship nor criminal jurisdiction.
This constitutional citizenship scheme does not disparage women or U.S. mothers. (In Nguyen v. INS (2001), the U.S. father claimed the scheme disparaged him.) Both U.S. men and women have the natural right to create natural citizens anywhere in the world. However, because of their biological differences, and the nature of political society, they exercise this right differently.
U.S. fathers secure the natural born Citizen status of their children by being married to the mother or by legitimation. Because there are no witnesses to their role in creating citizens, Nature requires men to claim their offspring into the political society.
In contrast, U.S. mothers secure natural born Citizen status for their children by marrying the U.S. father. Outside of marriage to a U.S. father, U.S. mothers convey only naturalized U.S. citizenship, which is the mother's fail-safe citizenship for her children. Naturalization laws are meant to secure citizenship rights for children of women, in spite of what men do. These citizens who are naturalized at birth because of their mother or because of their place of birth have all the rights of natural born Citizens, except the natural right to run for President. That natural political right is conveyed solely by the father.
The jurisdiction of natural born Citizens is truly remarkable. Because they are natural citizens, who gain their political authority from their fathers, they naturally owe no positive law duties to government. Congress does not legislate over natural born Citizens, but only over Citizens of the United States. Congress recognizes the jurisdiction of natural born Citizens (not to be subject to legislation), recognizes the criminal jurisdiction of natural persons, and recognizes the citizenship jurisdiction of U.S. citizen fathers by not legislating positive law inconsistently with these natural jurisdictions. For example, 8 USC 1409(c) portrays Congress' power to make naturalized citizens, while 8 USC 1409(a) portrays U.S. fathers' power to make non-naturalized (natural) ones. This fulfills the separation of powers between the father (who is sovereign over natural citizenship) and Congress (who is sovereign over naturalized citizenship) in citizenship matters.
The citizens that Congress makes owe Congress their political rights, whereas natural born Citizens do not. Natural citizens, who after all are natural persons, only owe natural duties to each other. Their willful or irresponsible violation of others' natural rights subjects them to the law jurisdiction of judicial courts. Ultimately, natural born Citizens are born free of everything but parental- and self-government, and subject themselves to the common government only 1) by injuring others or 2) by entering government's commercial jurisdiction called equity. (Income taxation, public education, and all government benefits operate under equity, which is a jurisdiction into which free citizens voluntarily enter at their peril.)
This separation of self-government from common government is only obtainable in a republican form of government. Such governments recognize that the People delegate some of their power to government, but reserve others, which are called natural rights. Non-republics do not respect anyone's rights because politburos or monarchs define these rights, instead of Nature. Keeping the definition of crime and citizenship out of the unnatural power of kings and politburos is essential for the republican form of government.
The United States' father-centric scheme of citizenship, i.e. to provide a natural jurisdiction where citizens' rights are not subject to legislatures, may not bode well in today's politically correct society. However, paraphrasing the Supreme Court in Minor v. Happersett (1875) which denied women the right to vote, it is“certainly now too late to contend that a government is not republican” because U.S. female citizens do not convey natural citizenship (but instead secure it by marriage to a U.S. father) In the thousands of years of republican governments, the rights of citizenship have always followed the father. It's one of the ways that republican governments keep would-be monarchs and emperors at bay.
Unless citizenship follows the father (who has jurisdiction over it), then the power to convey citizenship and rights rests solely in the government, which would make the government non-republican. Thus, Americans have this patriarchal scheme merely to prevent us from being a non-republic, and to prevent citizens from being subjects of monarchs, who convey all political rights. Under this wonderful scheme, natural born Citizens get all our political rights from our fathers (and not from a king or Congress), and those without U.S. fathers (but with U.S. mothers or soil birth) gain ALL the citizenship rights of natural born Citizens except the right to run for President or Vice President.
When the U.S. installs a “President” who is a Citizen of the United States, or allows Citizens of the United States to run for President, instead of just natural born Citizens, then both citizenship law and the republican form of government fail. Representative government fails because, according to the U.S. constitution, an artificial citizen cannot represent a natural one. It is religion to equate the two types of citizens.
Citizenship and justice in republics are naturally and objectively defined by natural science instead of by religious dogma. In such a republic, a President's eligibility is scientifically provable and natural born Citizens are facts of Nature, instead of religious opinions.
The 1st Amendment prohibits such a religious government that is not established on Nature (including logic) and natural science. It is idolatry in a republic to worship man as the source of political rights instead of Nature.