Justice Gray, Wong Kim Ark, "American parents"
Posted on 01/10/2016 7:36:03 AM PST by jimbo123
Article II of the Constitution states: "No Person except a natural born Citizen . . . shall be eligible to the Office of President." Donald Trump thinks Sen. Ted Cruz is not a "natural born Citizen" and that he is therefore constitutionally ineligible to be president. Is Trump right? Cruz was born in 1970 in Calgary, Canada, to a U.S. citizen mother and a Cuban citizen father. As to his Article II status, it's all in how you read the Constitution.
There are three leading theories of how to interpret the Constitution today. One is textualism: the Constitution means what its words say. The historical context of the words is important when a modern plain meaning is not self-evident. A second theory, adopted by many liberals, relies on a "living Constitution": the Constitution means what is most consistent with fundamental constitutional values as applied to present circumstances. The third theory, championed by many leading conservatives, is originalism: The Constitution means what ordinary people would have understood it to mean at the time it was ratified, which is 1788.
Under either a textualist or a "living Constitution" theory, Cruz is a "natural born Citizen," eligible to be president; under an originalist view, however, he isn't. It's the conservative theory that would exclude the conservative Cruz from presidential eligibility.
To an originalist, a "natural born Citizen" is a person who is a citizen of the United States under "natural" principles of law in 1788. Two such principles were then in play in the U.S. Jus soli - the law of soil - was the principle that a child was subject or citizen of the sovereign who ruled the land or seas on which the child was born. Jus soli was viewed as a part of the common law of England,
(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
Scalia has indicated twice he might lean towards Jus Soli as a requirement
Have you read the Cuban Constitution? There’s a citizenship chapter.
More Cruz birther nonsense.
LA Times.
Yes the 1796 NA took out natural born status for children born out of the country. Madison probably saw it as a loophole that could be abused.
1795 Naturalization Act, I mean.
Maybe they took it out because there was no longer any likelihood of an American monarchy. Every other state had a sovereign, but Washington had through his actions filled out the office so that the precedent had been set that he would be succeeded by a man like himself. It mattered greatly that the great man, unlike Cromwell had no natural heir. In an age where monarchy was the norm, it was now clear that the USA would remain a republic.
Speculation? Of course. But in the absence of a definition of the term in the document or even any other use of the word in it, we get to something like the quibbling over the meaning of Greek words in the New Testament.
bfl
bfl
Totally agree. It is abundantly clear what was meant as natural born. Someone born in the US of two US natural born citizens. Very, very clear.
It is a very big deal. If we blow this definition, I can see a day where the politicians will say why not just have someone as a naturalized citizen be eligible for president that way we can be truly citizens of the world or some such bs. It is quite obvious why they want to blow up this definition. They want to blow up America as it was founded and replace it with a mutant.
Manchester v Boston, Mass., 1827, both parents must be citizens of a state to pass citizenship child born abroad. The court referred to the 1802 Naturalization Act.
"It's a neat irony: The most conservative constitutional interpreters must find Cruz ineligible to be president; liberals must grin and bear him. Cruz himself purports to embrace originalism as the correct view of the Constitution. To be faithful to his understanding of what the Constitution means, the senator may have to disqualify himself."
Cruz is not what he claims to be.
There was np was the brilliant Cruz—not said facetiously—could have foreseen this would be an issue? Would it have been a human impossibility to have this addressed and resolved before the primaries got underway?
Justice Gray, Wong Kim Ark, "American parents"
It in inconceivable that the founding fathers would have considered the son of a Cuban born in Canada to an American mother to be a natural born citizen, eligible to be POTUS. In fact they would not have even considered him a citizen of the USA
Thomas Lee is a birther.
np was = no way
Sorry.
The problem is the writer is putting HIS beliefs into the Founders. THEIR beliefs were undoubtedly based on the meaning of “natural born subject”, and NBS included those born to British subjects in other lands. It also included the idea that Parliament could define NBS - something it first did around 1350, over 400 years before the Constitution.
They used NBC & NBS interchangeably in the years prior and after the US Constitution was written. 8 of the 11 men who put “NBC” into the Constitution were in Congress and approved of a law that specifically stated those born overseas were NBC. So no...I’m not buying what he is selling.
THEIR intent is clear. So is Trump’s, IMHO...
Time to erase this inequality.
Not "second class" just ineligible to run for President.
The NBC requirement when viewed contextually, was a guarantee that the leader of the country would not harbor allegiances to other nations. At the time, there were many English, French and Germans in the new republic that could be too considerate of their ancestral homeland.
Imagine if the Saudis had found a way to put a sympathizer in the White House - where would we be now?
Ted is a fine man and would make an excellent USSC Chief justice. He is NOT a NBC and should not be considered for President only because of the precedent it would be setting.
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