User:Arne Eickenberg/Chester Arthur

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Ineligibility claims

During Chester Arthur's Vice-Presidential campagin alongside James A. Garfield, Arthur P. Hinman, an attorney who had apparently been hired by the members of the Democratic party to explore rumors of Arthur's foreign birth, accused Arthur of being ineligible due to his birth in Ireland.[1] When Hinman's initial claims failed to gain traction, he maintained that Arthur was born in Canada and lobbied the press for support while searching for Arthur's birth records. When Arthur had become President due to Garfield's assassination, Hinman published a pamphlet aimed to cast doubt on Arthur's presidential eligibility.[2]

Hinman's unfounded allegations regarding Chester Arthur's place of birth however obscured the fact that Arthur was a natural-born subject of the British crown,[3] because his British-Irish father William Arthur did not naturalize as a U.S. citizen until August 1843, fourteen years after Chester Arthur's birth in Vermont.[4]

Neither the law nor any federal court ruling in the United States has ever determined whether a natural-born British subject like Chester Arthur can also be a natural born citizen of the United States, which is one of the constitutional requirements for the offices of President and Vice-President. It is equally unclear whether Arthur was even a U.S. citizen at birth, because until the Civil Rights Act of 1866 there had been no federal U.S. citizenship rule. He may have been a citizen of Vermont under the common law of the state, but the Fourteenth Amendment, which introduced U.S. ius soli into the United States Constitution, was ratified and adopted almost forty years after Arthur's birth. Even if applied retroactively, the 14th Amendment at the time only covered born and naturalized citizens under complete U.S. jurisdiction,[5] while Arthur's status at birth was (at least in part) governed by British common law.

In 1882 Chester Arthur nominated Horace Gray as U.S. Supreme Court Justice, whose seminal decision in United States v. Wong Kim Ark extended the right of 14th Amendment citizenship to children born on U.S. territory of foreign parents, who have permanent residence and domicile in the United States.[6] If Arthur ever intended to sanitize his own problematic citizenship status at birth, he failed, because the court only ruled that Wong Kim Ark was a citizen, while Justice Gray himself explicitly indicated that Wong Kim Ark was not natural born.[7]

However, Arthur actively thwarted/lied etc.

Notes

  1. ↑ Gentleman Boss, p. 202 sq..
  2. ↑ Arthur Hinman, [http://openlibrary.org/b/OL6978891M/How-a-British-subject-became-president-of-the-United-States. "How A British Subject Became President of the United States", in New York Times, New York 1884.
  3. ↑ William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England I.10 ([http://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/blackstone_bk1ch10.asp "Of People, Whether Aliens, Denizens or Natives"), Oxford 1765-1769:

    all children, born out of the king’s ligeance, whose fathers were natural-born subjects, are now natural-born subjects themselves, to all intents and purposes, without any exception;

    British common law with regard to patrilineal ius sanguinis and natural-born subjects of foreign birth was later codified in the British National and Status of Aliens Act of 1914.
  4. ↑ William Arthur's certificate of naturalization, State of New York, 08-31-1843, in: Chester A. Arthur Papers, Library of Congress, Washington.
  5. ↑ Cf. Lyman Trumbull & Jacob M. Howard in: Congressional Globe, 1st Session, 39th Congress, pt. 4, pp. 2893–95:

    The provision is, that 'all persons born in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens.' That means 'subject to the complete jurisdiction thereof.' What do we mean by 'complete jurisdiction thereof?' Not owing allegiance to anybody else. That is what it means.

    Cf. the ruling in 14 Op. U.S. Attorney General, 300:

    The word “jurisdiction” must be understood to mean absolute and complete jurisdiction, such as the United States had over its citizens before the adoption of this amendment… Aliens, among whom are persons born here and naturalized abroad, dwelling or being in this country, are subject to the jurisdiction of the United States only to a limited extent. Political and military rights and duties do not pertain to them.
  6. ↑ United States v. Wong Kim Ark, 169 U.S. 649 (1898).
  7. ↑ Horace Gray distinguished between natural born citizens and other citizens like Wong Kim Ark:

    The foregoing considerations and authorities irresistibly lead us to these conclusions: The fourteenth amendment affirms the ancient and fundamental rule of citizenship by birth within the territory, in the allegiance and under the protection of the country, including all children here born of resident aliens… Every citizen or subject of another country, while domiciled here, is within the allegiance and the protection, and consequently subject to the jurisdiction, of the United States. His allegiance to the United States is direct and immediate… and his child, as said by Mr. Binney in his essay before quoted, 'If born in the country, is as much a citizen as the natural-born child of a citizen…'
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