Page:Qualifications for President and the “Natural Born” Citizenship Eligibility Requirement.pdf/25

 one derived from what has been described as a “philosophical treatise” on the law of nations by a Swiss legal philosopher in the mid-1700s. This particular treatise, however, in the editions available at the time of the drafting of the U.S. Constitution, did not actually use, either in the original French or in English interpretations at that time, the specific term “natural born citizens.” It was not until after the adoption of the Constitution in the United States did a translator interpret the French in Emmerich de Vattel’s Law of Nations to include, in English, the term “natural born citizens” for the first time, and thus that particular interpretation and creative translation of the French, to which the Vattel enthusiasts cite, could not possibly have influenced the framing of the Constitution in 1787.

Furthermore, and on a more basic level, the influence of the work of Vattel on the framers in employing the term “natural born” in relation to domestic citizenship within the Constitution is highly speculative at best, is without any direct historical evidence, and is contrary to the mainstream principles of constitutional interpretation and analysis within American jurisprudence. Although it appears that there is one single reference by one delegate at the Federal Convention of 1787 to Vattel (in reference to several works of different authors to support an argument for equal voting representation of the states in the proposed Congress), there is no other reference to the work in the entire notes of any of the framers published on the proceedings of the Federal Convention of 1787, and specifically there is no reference or discussion of the work at all in relation to citizenship at the Convention, in the Federalist Papers, or in any of the state ratifying conventions. Rh