Veep Beat: Pawlenty Gets Second Look, Jindal Stock Rising

ABC News ^

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What about Rand Paul?

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According to Lynch v Clarke and the 14th amendment, Jindal would be eligible.

Lynch v. Clarke is not a controlling precedent. Read U.S. v. Wong Kim Ark. Gray cited this decision only as an example of a fringe decision that went the furthest in recognizing citizenship on the basis of jus soli, but Gray does not rely on this decision to make Wong Kim Ark a citizen.

Even those authorities in this country, which have gone the farthest towards holding such statutes to be but declaratory of the common law have distinctly recognized and emphatically asserted the citizenship of native-born children of foreign parents. 2 Kent Com. 39, 50, 53, 258 note; Lynch v. Clarke, 1 Sandf.Ch. 583, 659; Ludlam v. Ludlam, 26 N.Y. 356, 371.

This citation in on page 674 of the decion. Gray rambles on for 31 more pages and decides that the foreign parents have to have permanent residence and domicil in the U.S. to satisfy the subject clause of the 14th amendment. He does NOT declare such persons to be natural-born citizens. In fact, he says the 14th amendment does NOT define natural-born citizenship and he cites Minor v. Happersett as the controlling, unanimous precedent:

In Minor v. Happersett, Chief Justice Waite, when construing, in behalf of the court, the very provision of the Fourteenth Amendment now in question, said: "The Constitution does not, in words, say who shall be natural-born citizens. Resort must be had elsewhere to ascertain that."

When Minor went elsewhere to define natural-born citizen, it used a definition that matched the law of nations' definition verbatim: all children born in the country to parents who were its citizens. It said the citizenship of persons born in the country without reference to the citizenship of the parents was in doubt. The only way to resolve that doubt is through an act of naturalization, such as the 14th amendment.