by John Greschak
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This is the Update Log for the essay titled
What is a Natural Born Citizen of the United States?.
(Note: Numerous updates were published between December 2, 2008 and May 10,
2009 that were not recorded in this log.) January 12, 2010 Expanded the discussion of the letters exchanged between George Washington and John Jay during the Constitutional Convention. Added several paragraphs, fourteen images, and seven end notes. See: 011210a Modified (and moved) the discussion of the way John Jay wrote the phrase natural born Citizen in his letter to George Washington, from July 25, 1787. See: 011210b November 19, 2009 Expanded (and moved) the discussion of the way in which the phrase natural born Citizen is written in the original copies of the United States Constitution. Added three paragraphs, two images, and two end notes. See: 111909a Added three paragraphs, three images, and three end notes to discuss the earliest uses (of which I am aware) of the phrase natural born citizen in American newspapers. See: 111909b Inserted an end note concerning the use, by some writers, of a hyphen between the words natural and born in the phrase natural born Citizen of the United States. (Note: This end note was moved into the body of the essay in the next update.) Inserted an image of Chapter I of Book VIII of the 1756 edition of Guthrie's translation of the book Institutio Oratoria (by Quintilianus); and removed images of the 1805 reprint of the same. See: 111909d July 15, 2009 Added twelve paragraphs and one end note to discuss the intent of the requirement that the President of the United States be a natural born Citizen of the United States. See: 071509a and 071509b Expanded the discussion of the meaning of the word foreigner (from one paragraph to four), where Noah Webster's An American Dictionary of the English Language is examined. See: 071509c Condensed the discussion of the invalidity of Alternative Definitions AD1 through AD4, from two paragraphs to one. (Removed the discussion of the unconstitutionality of these alternative definitions, that was based upon the intent of the requirement that the President of the United States must be a natural born Citizen of the United States.) See: 071509d Rewrote the end note in which an explanation is given for why the phrase natural born was effectively removed from the Naturalization Act of 1790, when that act was superseded by the Naturalization Act of 1795. See: 071509e Revised the end note in which the Supreme Court opinion in the case Perkins v. Elg is discussed. (Removed the point concerning the unconstitutionality of the decision, that was based upon the intent of the requirement that the President of the United States must be a natural born Citizen of the United States.) See: 071509f Added a discussion of the words strong, check, admission, administration, undue and attachment, where Noah Webster's An American Dictionary of the English Language is examined. See: 071509g June 19, 2009 Added nine paragraphs and two end notes to discuss the definition of the phrase naturalized Citizen of the United States. (Introduced the concepts of original naturalness with respect to the United States and acquired naturalness with respect to the United States.) See: 061809a, 061809b and 061809c Appended the definition of the phrase naturalized Citizen of the United States to the Definition (text block) and to the Proposed Natural Born Citizen Amendment to the United States Constitution. See: 061809d and 061809e Revised and expanded the discussion of Alternative Definition AD2. See: 061809f Introduced the terms Type NR Citizen of the United States and Type NNR Citizen of the United States. See: 061809g May 31, 2009 Expanded the end note that discusses the dictionaries used in this essay (Merriam-Webster's Online Dictionary and An American Dictionary of the English Language). See: 053109a Added an end note to clarify what I mean by "the principles and methodology employed in deducing natural law." See: 053109b May 26, 2009 Added ten paragraphs and three end notes to discuss three definitions of the phrase natural born Citizen of the United States that result from lines of thought that are different from what I have pursued in this essay. (These paragraphs are in place of the three paragraphs and end notes that were added in the previous update). See: 052609a, 052609b, 052609c and 052609d May 18, 2009 Added three paragraphs and two end notes that compare the meaning put forward here for the phrase natural born Citizen of the United States with the meanings of other similar phrases that were in use around the time when the United States Constitution was written. (These paragraphs were replaced by new paragraphs in the subsequent update.) Added links to all end note numbers in end notes to enable one to return to the place in the text where the end note numbers occur. May 14, 2009 Changed paragraphs in which Noah Webster's An American Dictionary of the English Language is examined: (1) replaced transcripts of definitions for normal, preternatural and Citizen with scanned images of the dictionary; (2) removed an incorrect statement that the word normally is used in the definition of the word short-sightedness; (3) added italics to transcripts of definitions to match formatting in the dictionary; and (4) added three end notes. See: 051409a, 051409b, 051409c and 051409d May 10, 2009 Added five paragraphs that discuss the relationship between the phrase natural-born citizens, as used in the 1797 English Edition of Vattel's The Law of Nations, and the definition put forward here for the phrase natural born Citizen of the United States. See: 051009a Added an end note concerning the word exclusively, and the possibility of a child having more or less than two biological and legal parents. See: 051009b December 2, 2008 Published the initial version of the essay. |