by Dr Alan Keyes
Over the weekend I
read an
article by Larry Klayman in which he asserts that, like Barack Obama, Ted Cruz
and Marco Rubio are not “natural born” citizens of the United States; and are
therefore ineligible to serve as President. He asserts that to satisfy the
requirement both parents must have been U.S. Citizens at the time of birth. He
cites the authority of the French thinker Emerich de Vattel to justify this
conclusion. In point of fact, however, what Vattel says on the subject in his
work on The Law of Nations is this:
Natural or
indigenous [citizens] are those who are born in the country, of citizen
parents. Since society cannot perpetuate itself except through the children of
citizens, these children naturally follow the condition of their fathers, and
enter into all their rights… (Para. 212)…By the law of nature alone, children
follow the condition of their fathers, and enter into all their rights; the
place of birth produces no change in this particular and cannot of itself
furnish any reason for taking from a child what nature has given him; I say “of
itself,” for civil or political laws may, for particular reasons, ordain
otherwise (Para 215)….because a man’s country is the place where his parents
lived at the term of his birth, or the State to which his father belonged at
that time. (Para. 219). (My translation of the French language Kindle edition of the text, dated
1757.)
In line with this more accurate
reading of Vattel, Thomas Lee, a Fordham University law professor, takes the
view that “Jus sanguinis, or the law of blood…would have applied to that
father’s place of birth in 1788.” Lee thus implies that America’s Founders
would have upheld this practice of nations as evidence of the natural law.
But the notion that the father has, by nature, superior parental authority is rejected by John Locke in Chapter VI of his Second Treatise, a work known to have influenced the American Founders’ understanding that “all men are created equal”. This understanding, proclaimed in the Declaration of Independence, applies to all human beings, unless we accept the easily disproved notion that the use of the word “men” in the Declaration is a reference to gender rather than humanity. But this is obviously absurd, since it would not only strip women of all parental authority, it would strip them of any and all God endowed unalienable rights- a thought never seriously entertained at the time of the founding, or in any subsequent generation of Americans.
In the Second Treatise Locke finds fault with the use of the word “paternal” in reference to the human power to which children are naturally subject at birth: “…as this…seems so to place the power of parents over their children wholly in the father, as if the mother had no share in it; whereas, if we consult reason or revelation, we shall find she has an equal title. This may give one reason to ask whether this might not be more properly called ‘parental power,’ for whatever obligation nature and the right of generation lays on children, it must certainly bind them equally to both concurrent causes of it.”
Now, with reference to generation (i.e., the consequence of procreation) the word “obligation” refers, at its root, to bonds that inform and determine the characteristics that pass from one generation to the next. Given the scientific breakthroughs of the 20th century, we understand the nature of these bonds even more explicitly than ever before in human history. Rest of article
But the notion that the father has, by nature, superior parental authority is rejected by John Locke in Chapter VI of his Second Treatise, a work known to have influenced the American Founders’ understanding that “all men are created equal”. This understanding, proclaimed in the Declaration of Independence, applies to all human beings, unless we accept the easily disproved notion that the use of the word “men” in the Declaration is a reference to gender rather than humanity. But this is obviously absurd, since it would not only strip women of all parental authority, it would strip them of any and all God endowed unalienable rights- a thought never seriously entertained at the time of the founding, or in any subsequent generation of Americans.
In the Second Treatise Locke finds fault with the use of the word “paternal” in reference to the human power to which children are naturally subject at birth: “…as this…seems so to place the power of parents over their children wholly in the father, as if the mother had no share in it; whereas, if we consult reason or revelation, we shall find she has an equal title. This may give one reason to ask whether this might not be more properly called ‘parental power,’ for whatever obligation nature and the right of generation lays on children, it must certainly bind them equally to both concurrent causes of it.”
Now, with reference to generation (i.e., the consequence of procreation) the word “obligation” refers, at its root, to bonds that inform and determine the characteristics that pass from one generation to the next. Given the scientific breakthroughs of the 20th century, we understand the nature of these bonds even more explicitly than ever before in human history. Rest of article
