A birth certificate is a vital record that documents the birth of a child. Outside the United States, the term “birth certificate” refers to a certification of the original birth record. In the United States, the term “birth certificate” can refer to either the original document or to a certification thereof. In the U.S., the keeping of vital statistics is a state function, because it is not a power assigned by the Constitution to the federal government (under the Tenth Amendment, all powers not given to the federal government are reserved to the states and the people), and yet the federal government is extremely dependent upon this state function it lacks direct jurisdiction over, because the Fourteenth Amendment expressly grounds American citizenship upon birth in the United States (a jus soli system of citizenship).
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