Is the question of Cruz’s eligibility something we want to trust to the Supreme Court?

Coach is Right ^ | 1/15/16 | Kevin "Coach" Collins

[Godebert]

Note the reference to Natural Law in the first sentence of our Declaration of Independence.

It is crystal clear that the Founding Fathers used the Natural Law definition of 'natural born Citizen' when they wrote Article II. By invoking "The Laws of Nature and Nature's God" the 56 signers of the Declaration incorporated a legal standard of freedom into the forms of government that would follow.

President John Quincy Adams, writing in 1839, looked back at the founding period and recognized the true meaning of the Declaration's reliance on the "Laws of Nature and of Nature's God." He observed that the American people's "charter was the Declaration of Independence. Their rights, the natural rights of mankind. Their government, such as should be instituted by the people, under the solemn mutual pledges of perpetual union, founded on the self-evident truth's proclaimed in the Declaration."

The Constitution, Vattel, and “Natural Born Citizen”: What Our Framers Knew

The Laws of Nature and of Nature's God: The True Foundation of American Law

The Supreme Court of the United States has never applied the term “natural born citizen” to any other category than “those born in the country of parents who are citizens thereof”.

MINOR V. HAPPERSETT IS BINDING PRECEDENT AS TO THE CONSTITUTIONAL DEFINITION OF A NATURAL BORN CITIZEN.

Neither the 14th Amendment nor Wong Kim Ark make one a Natural Born Citizen

The Harvard Law Review Article Taken Apart Piece by Piece and Utterly Destroyed

Citizenship Terms Used in the U.S. Constitution - The 5 Terms Defined & Some Legal Reference to Same

"The citizenship of no man could be previous to the declaration of independence, and, as a natural right, belongs to none but those who have been born of citizens since the 4th of July, 1776."....David Ramsay, 1789.

A Dissertation on Manner of Acquiring Character & Privileges of Citizen of U.S.-by David Ramsay-1789

The Law of Nations or the Principles of Natural Law (1758)

The Laws of Nature and of Nature's God: The True Foundation of American Law

Publications of the Colonial Society of Massachusetts, Volume 20 - Use of The Law of Nations by the Constitutional Convention

[Cboldt]

-- I'd bet the house that if the Supreme Court addressed this issue, it would conclude (correctly) that the phrase "natural born citizen" means a person who is a citizen at birth. It would further find that the Constitution left to the Congress the role of defining the rules for citizenship. --

Don't make the bet. Just friendly advice. Const says Congress makes rules of naturalization. The case of Rogers v. Bellei would not exist at all if Bellie was an NBC.

I don't have time to explain it. Carry on.

[precisionshootist]

"On its face there seems to be no question about Senator Ted Cruz’s eligibility to serve as president."

Stopped right there. Author Lost all hope of credibility. No matter which side you are on there is a HUGE question about his eligibility. And this battle could be lost very easily.

"On it's face", any objective view would conclude a person born on foreign soil with only one citizen parent could not be "Natural Born".

Now if you want to argue citing laws, writings, court references and such you can but that is certainly not "on it's face".

[minimum12]

Cruz’s father was a refugee alien in canada from cuba, nothing to do with the US. The 1790 act explicitly stated that those born abroad with foreign fathers were not natural born citizens, and that’s the only act of legislation to ever mention the term.

[Bruce Campbells Chin]

I suppose I read that case the exact opposite as you apparently do, and yes, I'm an attorney. I think the portion of the opinion at 301 U.S. 828-830 expressly recognized that jus sanguinas is a valid form of birth citizenship. However, unlike jus solis under the 14th Amendment, jus sanguinas citizenship is a function of statute. Which was exactly my point.

Jus solis citizenship is constitutionally mandated, and Congress therefore does not have the power to strip that by adding conditions subsequent. However, jus sanguinas is a creation of statute, and so can be limited by Congress.

I'd point out also that the Court cites approvingly to not only the Act of 1790, but also specifically to Congress authorizing natual born citizenship for certain people born overseas.

[Cboldt]

If Bellie (Bellei?) was an NBC, would the case be before the court?

[Cboldt]

All the justices agree Bellei is naturalized. The question presented is if citizenship can be stripped from a naturalized citizen. You don't have to accept that right now, but hold it in your mind ...

Selected quotes, I am trying to be honest and not cherry pick. Don't trust me, look for yourself. I just now noticed in the procedural history, Bellei asserted he was NBC ...
"and that he is, and always has been, a native-born United States citizen".

That contention apparently didn't survive judgments below.

[p 826] The application of these respective statutes to a person in plaintiff Bellei's position produces the following results:

1. ... 3. [read those, and ask yourself if that sounds like NBC]

He was not born in the United States. He was not naturalized in the United States. And he has not been subject to the jurisdiction of the United States. All this being so, it seems indisputable that the first sentence of the Fourteenth Amendment has no application to plaintiff Bellei. He simply is not a "Fourteenth Amendment first sentence" citizen. ... The plaintiff's claim thus must center in the statutory power of Congress and in the appropriate exercise of that power within the restrictions of any pertinent constitutional provisions other than the Fourteenth Amendment's first sentence.

[citing] United States v. Won Kim Ark, 169 U. S. 649, 169 U. S. 668-671 (1898). The Court concluded that "naturalization by descent" was not a common law concept, but was dependent, instead, upon statutory enactment.

We thus have an acknowledgment that our law in this area follows English concepts with an acceptance of the jus soli, that is, that the place of birth governs citizenship status except as modified by statute. [a plain reading of the text of the constitution produces the same result]

Thus, at long last, there emerged an express constitutional definition of citizenship. But it was one restricted to the combination of three factors, each and all significant: birth in the United States, naturalization in the United States, and subjection to the jurisdiction of the United States. The definition obviously did not apply to any acquisition of citizenship by being born abroad of an American parent. That type, and any other not covered by the Fourteenth Amendment, was necessarily left to proper congressional action.

And the Court has specifically recognized the power of Congress not to grant a United States citizen the right to transmit citizenship by descent. As hereinabove noted, persons born abroad, even of United States citizen fathers who, however, acquired American citizenship after the effective date of the 1802 Act, were aliens.

Then, too, the Court has recognized that, until the 1934 Act, the transmission of citizenship to one born abroad was restricted to the child of a qualifying American father, and withheld completely from the child of a United States citizen mother and an alien father. Montana v. Kennedy, supra.

Further, it is conceded here both that Congress may withhold citizenship from persons like plaintiff Bellei ...

There is lots more on the subject, including the dissent (which would NOT have stripped Bellei of his naturalized citizenship-at-birth) literally saying Bellei was naturalized.

The first congressional exercise of this power, entitled "An Act to establish an uniform Rule of Naturalization," was passed in 1790 at the Second Session of the First Congress. ..[quotes the statute] ... This provision is the earliest form of the statute under which Bellei acquired his citizenship. Its enactment as part of a "Rule of Naturalization" shows, I think, that the First Congress conceived of this and most likely all other purely statutory grants of citizenship as forms or varieties of naturalization. However, the clearest expression of the idea that Bellei and others similarly situated should for constitutional purposes be considered as naturalized citizens is to be found in United States v. Wong Kim Ark ...

As shown in Wong Kim Ark, naturalization, when used in its constitutional sense, is a generic term describing and including within its meaning all those modes of acquiring American citizenship other than birth in this country. All means of obtaining American citizenship which are dependent upon a congressional enactment are forms of naturalization.

Bellei, as a naturalized American, is entitled to all the rights and privileges of American citizenship, including the right to keep his citizenship until he voluntarily renounces or relinquishes it.

The case turned, by the way, on the meaning of "naturalized in the US." Depends on what the meaning of "in" is. The majority said Bellei wasn't naturalized in the US, so it was okay to strip his citizenship. That is the pivot point between majority and dissent.

If you hadn't confessed to being a lawyer, I would not have composed this screed. Your punishment now is that you had to read it.

[Yosemitest]

FACT: Cruz’s father’s Cuban nationality at the time of Cruz’s birth, is irrelevant, according to the law at that time,
just so long as he was a LEGAL Immigrant at the time of Ted Cruz's birth,
AND both of Ted Cruz's parents were legally married to each other.

What are the rules for people born between December 23, 1952 and November 13, 1986?

The 14th Amendment IS a part of the U.S. Constitution and states in SECTION 5.
The Congress shall have power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.
So, under that power to legislate, Congress legislated and the President signed into law:
When ONE parent was a US citizen and the other a foreign national,
the US citizen parent must have resided in the US for a total of 10 years prior to the birth of the child,
with five of the years after the age of 14.

... While there were initially rules regarding what the child must do to retain citizenship,
amendments since 1952 HAVE ELIMINATED THESE REQUIREMENTS.

When Ted Cruz was born, his parents were "IN WEDLOCK".

They married, moved to Calgary, Alberta, and in late 1970 had their first and only child, Rafael Edward Cruz.
Cruz was born on December 22, 1970 in Calgary, Alberta, Canada where his parents, Eleanor Elizabeth Darragh Wilson and Rafael Bienvenido Cruz.

Cruz's mother was born and raised in Wilmington, Delaware, in a family of three quarters Irish and one quarter Italian descent.
Eleanor Darragh, mother of Ted Cruz, was raised in Delaware, graduated from a Catholic High School (1952) in the U.S., as well as Rice University (1956),
so clearly she meets the residency requirements.

Source

In 1957, Rafael Bienvenido Cruz (Ted Cruz's father) decided to get out of Cuba by applying to the University of Texas.
Upon being admitted, he adds, he got a four-year student visa at the U.S. Consulate in Havana.

"Since he liked to eat seven days a week, he worked seven days a week, and he paid his way through the University of Texas," Ted Cruz says of his father, "and then ended up getting a job and eventually going on to start a small business and to work towards the American dream."

Only he did that in Canada, where Ted was born.
His father went there after having earlier obtained political asylum in the U.S. when his student visa ran out.
He then got a green card, he says, and married Ted's mother, an American citizen.
The two of them moved to Canada to work in the oil industry.

"I worked in Canada for eight years," Rafael Cruz says. "And while I was in Canada, I became a Canadian citizen."

The elder Cruz says he renounced his Canadian citizenship when he finally became a U.S. citizen in 2005 —
48 years after leaving Cuba.
Why did he take so long to do it?
"I don't know. I guess laziness, or — I don't know," he says.

So there is the law for the time Ted Cruz was born,
AND HOW Ted Cruz's PARENTS fulfilled ALL those requirements of the law that time, for Ted Cruz to be a "Natural Born Citizen".
Ted Cruz did NOT NEED a Court and a Judge to "Nationalize" him.

“Senator Cruz became a U.S. citizen at birth, and he never had to go through a naturalization process after birth to become a U.S. citizen,” said spokeswoman Catherine Frazier.
... The U.S. Constitution allows only a “natural born” American citizen to serve as president.
Most legal scholars who have studied the question agree that includes an American born overseas to an American parent, such as Cruz.

[Yosemitest]

Lawyers Mario Apuzzo and Leo Donofrio have been DISMISSED BY THE COURT 'WITH PREJUDICE'.
They're totally UNRELIABLE as sources !

Arizona Court Declares Lawyers Mario Apuzzo and Leo Donofrio Totally Cracked on What Makes a Natural Born Citizen

Now IF the Court had given such a “definition,” it still would’ve merely been non-binding dicta, or side commentary —
as any such determination was clearly non-essential to the matter they were deciding.
Such reasoning might have been convincing to a later Court — or it might not have been.

But the fact is,
they simply didn’t create any such “definition” of “natural born citizen” —
in spite of Apuzzo’s (and Leo Donofrio’s) elaborate twisting of their words to try and make it sound as if they did.

And even if they had — which they didn’t — it would’ve been OVERTURNED 23 years later, in the definitive citizenship case of US v. Wong Kim Ark.
In that case, the Supreme Court told us quite clearly, in not one, but in two different ways, that Wong Kim Ark,
who was born on US soil of two NON-citizen Chinese parents, wasn’t thereby JUST “a citizen” —
he was ALSO “natural born.”

If he was “natural born,” and he was “a citizen,”
then it is inescapable that the Court found young Mr. Wong to be a natural born citizen.


The 6 Justices who agreed on the majority opinion (against only 2 dissenters) also discussed the implications of such status for Presidential eligibility.
So they in fact found
that Wong Kim Ark would be legally eligible to run for President upon meeting the other qualifications — reaching the age of 35, and 14 years’ residence.

Mr. Wong, who lived most of his life as a simple Chinese cook in Chinatown, never ran for President, of course.
And in the highly racial America of his day Wong almost certainly could not have been elected if he had tried.

But according to the United States Supreme Court, legally speaking,
Mr. Wong DID HAVE the legal qualification to eventually run for, and serve as, President of the United States —
if the People should have decided that he was the right person for the job.

There’s much deeper we could go into the issue, of course.
I haven’t found the time to refute Mr. Apuzzo’s bogus “two citizen parents” claims in the full, absolute detail that I would like to.
There is an awful lot of refutation here, here, and here,
though.

It would be nice to put ALL of the pieces together in one place.
However, for those who don’t mind a bit of digging, the references given above are a good start.

But never mind — a court in the State of Arizona the day before yesterday quite clearly and authoritatively refuted Mr. Apuzzo for me.
The court smacked down Apuzzo’s and Donofrio’s claims in no uncertain terms.

Judge Richard Gordon DISMISSED the ballot-challenge case of Allen v. Arizona Democratic Party.
And he did so “WITH PREJUDICE,” which means
“This case has been fully heard and judged on its merits
and we’re done with it —
don’t attempt to darken my door with this same accusation ever again.”

Note that again:
Apuzzo’s claim has been officially tried in a court of law, on its merits, and found to be totally cracked.
And the ruling struggled to stretch barely past two pages into three.
That is NOT a lot of discussion,
which indicates that this was not anything even REMOTELY resembling a “close call.”


The pertinent language in Judge Gordon’s ruling is as follows:

“Plaintiff claims that
President Obama cannot stand for reelection [in the State of Arizona] because he is not a ‘natural born citizen’ as required by the United States Constitution… Most importantly, Arizona courts are bound by United States Supreme Court precedent in construing the United States Constitution,
Arizona v. Jay J. Garfield Bldg. Co., 39 Ariz. 45, 54, 3 P.2d 983, 986 (1931),
and this precedent fully supports
that President Obama is a natural born citizen under the Constitution
and thus qualified to hold the office of President.
See United States v. Wong Kim Ark
, 169 U.S. 649, 702-03 (1898) (addressing U. S. Const. amend. XIV); Ankeny v. Governor of the State of Indiana,
916 N.E.2d 678, 684-88 (Ind. App. 2010) (addressing the precise issue).
Contrary to Plaintiff's assertion, Minor v. Happersett, 88 U.S. 162 (1874), does not hold otherwise.“

Ouch. That’s gonna leave a mark.

So your statement that "natural born means both parents " has been DENIED by the courts !

[jch10]

Sure, just like they did Obama.......oh, wait!

[jmaroneps37]

It’s amazing that the same people here who hate the Supreme Court and don’t trust it want to leave this issue up to it. How self-delusional and hypocritical can you get?

[jmaroneps37]

It’s amazing that the same people here who hate the Supreme Court and don’t trust it want to leave this issue up to it. How self-delusional and hypocritical can you get?

[jmaroneps37]

It’s amazing that the same people here who hate the Supreme Court and don’t trust it want to leave this issue up to it. How self-delusional and hypocritical can you get?

[jmaroneps37]

The system repeated my post - I didn’t post it three times.

[Larry Lucido]

More like blog pimp extraordinaire.

Old Maxipad, the king of clickbait.

[minimum12]

That’s non-sequitur, because all citizens born abroad are only citizens by definition of naturalization statutes, otherwise they wouldn’t even be citizens. So, he was naturalized at birth at best. And if you go by the founders intentions, cruz’s father was a cuban refugee in canada, and the 1790 amendment specifically excluded those born abroad to foreign fathers as being natural born citizens.

[Cboldt]

Dang, man. How many times do I have to whine to you to please don't "wall of text" me. Make your point succinctly, or make it to someone else and explain to them why cboldt is wrong. You don't even have to ping me, I don't care if you "talk behind my back," even if it is to badmouth me or impugn my character. I won't complain about it at all. I prefer it.

[Bruce Campbells Chin]

Going to see Benghazi flick now, but I’ll get back to you.

[Cboldt]

Enjoy the flick - no need to get back to me. I’m content just pleading my case, and need no concurring judgment ;-)

[Yosemitest]

HE's WRONG.
I've posted the LAW and the Constitutional backing many times. I've posted many professions explaining WHY he's wrong.
But some people will hang on to their false beliefs, regardless of the FACTS.
You just can't fix BULLHEADED STUPIDITY !