Oh, For Goodness Sake

De Vattel And ‘Natural Born Citizen’: Simply Put

The “Natural Born Citizen” discussion gets very complicated, very quickly, and hard to follow. When I saw this post by Epectitus at Politijab about the Swiss philosopher Emmerich de Vattel, who is constantly cited by the Birther movement, I thought I would post it, along with Dr. Conspiracy’s link above, as the anti-Birther view.

Well… unless you believe in time travel, it is absolutely impossible for de Vattel to have had any influence over the Article 2 definition of “natural born citizen.” The inappropriately named “de Vattel definition” is not de Vattel’s and did not exist until 10 years after the Constitution was written.

The simple facts are these:

1. De Vattel wrote in French, and the phrase “natural born citizen” never passed through either his lips or his pen. It does not exist anywhere in his final manuscript of Droit des gens (Law of nations)

2. At least six English editions of Law of Nations were published between 1759 and 1797… and not one of them translated “Les Naturels, ou Indigènes” to include the phrase “natural born citizens.”

3. The first time the phrase “natural born citizens” was ever associated with de Vattel was in the 1797 London edition. This was ten years after the Constitution was adopted, and 30 years after de Vattel’s death.

Now… some Birthers will assert that since several of the founding father’s spoke French, they somehow understood this to be a reference to natural born citizenship. In actuality, any straightforward reading of the original French shows beyond a doubt that de Vattel was not saying that a “natural born citizen” had to have two citizen parents, he was saying that you need two citizen parents to be a citizen at all!!! Needless to say, that opens up a whole ‘nother can of worms that would not be Birther friendly.