If Cruz wants to run for President, do you think he will face any serious legal challenge to his eligibility?
So there you have it. ------------------------------------
No. He didn't.
But I have ducked an insightful proposition in rxsid's #80.
How exactly does a person become a citizen of the U S at birth? Who decides?
Easy to say the 14th Amendment makes everyone born in the US a citizen for all purposes which is how the Court will come down.
But born outside the US? The Constitution only specifically authorizes Congress (Article I, Section 8, the fourth clause) to "establish an uniform Rule of Naturalization. . . ." For that matter, born inside the US prior to the 14th Amendment--what was the law? What is the current state of International Law on that topic?
Says rxsid, anybody born outside the US who needs to rely on the statute for citizenship at birth is effectively relying on a Naturalization proceeding because that is all Congress is authorized to provide for.
In no event, would such a person be Natural Born; in fact, it is going to be a struggle for anyone born outside the US without two citizen parents who are at the place of birth on an intermittent stay to ever be a citizen at birth.
The mother citizen statute on which Cruz would need to rely is a problem. It is probably unconstitutional because a person born to a married father and mother where the father was a citizen and the mother was not a citizen did not get automatic citizen at birth status.
More important, the argument set forth by the Congressional Research Service opinion in the last 14 pages of the opinion that a person born outside the US might be Natural Born is clearly bogus.
The Constitutional Bar has generally rejected that portion of the opinion on substantive grounds but I don't think anyone has really attacked it on a power's basis--the idea is that there aren't any facts that would fit Congress having the power to grant such citizenship other that the uniform rules of naturalization clause. No way could such a person be treated as Natural Born. Is that correct?
In the eyes of US law, those that become naturalized citizens by oath are not allowed to be dual citizens/nationals. Yet, a citizen at birth (naturalized or by 14th Amendment), can be a dual national and many here believe (unlike myself) that a "natural born Citizen" may also be a citizen of a foreign country.
Once you get to the point that the power comes from Section 8, the oath issue doesn't mean much to the Natural Born argument.
On the other hand, from a Constitutional Law point of view, there isn't any reason why a person, born in the US, who is a citizen under some rule adopted by some other country, would be treated as anything other than Natural Born. There isn't any jurisdictional reason the sovereign of that country would have any power over the person born in the US.
The sovereign of the second country has simply given the person the rights and privileges of a citizen; wouldn't burden his exercise of the power of chief executive of the US in any way I can see; nor do I see anywhere in the history that the founder's were ever worried about it.
rxsid is wrong about the dual citizenship argument. But he raises an interesting point about the powers that I don't see the answer to although I haven't done any research on the topic either.