Definition
A native citizen is a person who holds citizenship by virtue of birth rather than by naturalization. In American legal usage, the term has historically described a person born within the United States, or born abroad to parents who are themselves citizens and who have resided in the United States. The term is closely associated with — but not always interchangeable with — the constitutional concept of a "natural born citizen."
Two distinct senses appear in historical usage:
1. Citizenship by birthplace (jus soli): A person born within the territorial jurisdiction of the United States acquires citizenship at birth without any affirmative act. This is the dominant modern understanding, codified through the Fourteenth Amendment.
2. Citizenship by descent (jus sanguinis): A person born abroad to citizen parents may also qualify as a native citizen, provided the parents had established residence in the United States. This transmission-by-descent rule is reflected in Burrill's definition and in early federal statutes governing citizenship.
The term is no longer standard in American statutory or constitutional law. Modern sources use "birthright citizenship," "citizenship by birth," or "natural born citizen" (in the constitutional context of presidential eligibility) rather than "native citizen."
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Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): Not a standard Wiktionary entry as a compound term; the component words suggest simply "a citizen who is native to a place" — i.e., born there.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): Webster's treats "native" as an adjective meaning produced or originating in a particular place, and "citizen" as a member of a state owing allegiance to it. The compound would naturally read as one born a citizen in a place.
The legal gap is subtle but important: ordinary usage implies pure birthplace citizenship, while the legal term — at least historically — encompassed both birth on the soil and birth abroad to qualifying parents. A researcher assuming "native citizen" means only jus soli will miss the jus sanguinis component present in Burrill's formulation and early American practice.
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Common Confusion
NATIVE CITIZEN vs. NATURAL BORN CITIZEN: These terms are frequently treated as synonymous, and in many contexts they overlap, but they are not identical. "Natural born citizen" is the constitutional term of art appearing in Article II and governing presidential eligibility. "Native citizen" is a descriptive legal category used in treatises and statutes to identify those who hold citizenship from birth rather than by naturalization. The constitutional meaning of "natural born citizen" has been the subject of sustained interpretive debate in a way that "native citizen," as a category, has not. Researchers should not assume that historical dictionary definitions of "native citizen" resolve Article II questions.
NATIVE CITIZEN vs. NATURALIZED CITIZEN: The core contrast in the historical literature is between native citizens (those who never had to affirmatively claim citizenship) and naturalized citizens (those admitted to citizenship through legal process). The distinction carries legal consequences: naturalized citizens historically faced restrictions that native citizens did not, including ineligibility for the presidency.
NATIVE CITIZEN vs. NATIVE AMERICAN / INDIGENOUS PERSON: In contemporary usage, "native" carries strong associations with Indigenous identity. Researchers encountering "native citizen" in historical sources should not read modern connotations backward. The term in nineteenth-century legal dictionaries has no connection to tribal membership, Indigenous sovereignty, or Native American legal status as those concepts are understood today.
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Why It Matters in Research
The term "native citizen" is a historical artifact that bridges early American citizenship doctrine and later constitutional developments. Several research traps warrant attention.
Pre-Fourteenth Amendment sources: Before 1868, birthright citizenship rested on common law inheritance and early federal statute, not constitutional command. When Burrill defines a native citizen to include persons born before the Declaration of Independence who later removed to the United States, he is describing a specific historical moment — the founding-era settlement of citizenship status — not a durable rule. Researchers reading this definition in a post-Reconstruction context will misapply it.
The descent-based component: Burrill's inclusion of children born abroad to citizen parents reflects the Naturalization Act of 1790 and its successors, which treated such persons as "natural born citizens" — language Congress later amended. This jus sanguinis element drops out of many later discussions of "native citizenship." If your research involves citizenship disputes from the early national period, the descent-based rule is critical and easily overlooked.
Rapalje & Lawrence's cross-reference structure: Rapalje & Lawrence does not define "native citizen" directly; it redirects to CITIZEN, NATIVES, and NATION with citations to Kent's Commentaries and a Supreme Court report. This cross-reference pattern signals that "native citizen" was not treated as a fully independent legal concept in that dictionary but rather as a sub-category requiring synthesis across multiple entries. Researchers using Rapalje & Lawrence should follow those internal redirects and treat the term as embedded in a larger citizenship framework.
Jurisdictional and temporal layering: State citizenship and federal citizenship were distinct concepts well into the Reconstruction era. A person could be a "native citizen" of a state without the full bundle of federal rights, or vice versa. Sources predating the Fourteenth Amendment must be read with this dual-citizenship structure in mind.
The term's disappearance: Because "native citizen" largely drops from legal usage after the Fourteenth Amendment and the codification of birthright citizenship, it appears predominantly in older treatises, early federal reports, and naturalization-related litigation. Corpus searches for the term will skew heavily toward pre-1900 materials.
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Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill provides the most substantive definition in the Law Mind source corpus. His formulation is notable for including three categories: those born in the United States after the Declaration of Independence, those born before who subsequently took up residence in the country, and those born abroad to citizen parents who had established U.S. residence. The citation to Hilliard's Real Property signals that native citizenship was not merely a political status question — it intersected with real property rights, inheritance, and the capacity to hold land, which in early American law sometimes depended on citizenship status.
Rapalje & Lawrence's redirect to Kent's Commentaries is instructive. Kent's discussion of citizenship (2 Kent Com. 39) synthesizes the English common law inheritance principle with early American statutory and constitutional development. Kent treats birth on the soil as the primary basis of allegiance and citizenship, with descent-based rules as supplementary. This hierarchy is worth noting: Rapalje & Lawrence, by citing Kent rather than defining the term independently, signals that the authoritative treatment lived in treatise law rather than in the technical legal dictionary tradition.
What the historical dictionaries miss: Neither source engages with the citizenship status of enslaved persons, free Black Americans, or Indigenous peoples — populations whose native birth on American soil did not, under pre-Fourteenth Amendment law, produce the citizenship these definitions assumed. The definitions in Burrill and the Kent-via-Rapalje framework describe native citizenship as it applied to white persons under prevailing legal doctrine. Researchers must supply this critical context; the historical sources do not.
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Jurisdictional Note
The Fourteenth Amendment's Citizenship Clause (1868) nationalized the definition of birthright citizenship and displaced most state-law variation. Prior to 1868, states exercised significant autonomy over the incidents of citizenship, and a "native citizen" of one state might not enjoy the same rights in another. Research involving citizenship status before Reconstruction must account for this state-federal variability. After 1868, federal constitutional doctrine governs, and historical state-level definitions are primarily of antiquarian interest.
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Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
The Law Mind Constitutional Law Encyclopedia: constitutional_200, Native American Sovereignty and Constitutional Structure — relevant for understanding the boundary between tribal citizenship/membership and U.S. citizenship, particularly as "native" terminology can create confusion across these distinct legal frameworks.
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