WaPo (Op-Ed): Ted Cruz Not Eligible

Washington Post ^ | January 12, 2016 | Mary Brigid McManamon

[Behind the Blue Wall]

Donald Trump is actually right about something: Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) is not a natural-born citizen and therefore is not eligible to be president or vice president of the United States.

The Constitution provides that "No person except a natural born citizen . . . shall be eligible to the office of President." The concept of "natural born" comes from the common law, and it is that law the Supreme Court has said we must turn to for the concept's definition. On this subject, the common law is clear and unambiguous. The 18th-century English jurist William Blackstone, the preeminent authority on it, declared natural-born citizens are "such as are born within the dominions of the crown of England," while aliens are "such as are born out of it."

. . .

Cruz is, of course, a U.S. citizen. As he was born in Canada, he is not natural born. His mother, however, is an American, and Congress has provided by statute for the naturalization of children born abroad to citizens. Because of the senator's parentage, he did not have to follow the lengthy naturalization process that aliens without American parents must undergo. Instead, Cruz was naturalized at birth.

[Faith Presses On]

I didn’t complete my copy and paste for the whole picture on NBC:

- The Constitution’s flexibility - to allow for adapting to new situations and circumstances without the need for amendments, as much as would be possible.

- The Constitution’s inflexibility - to legally enshrine some principles and practices in order to protect them from capricious law-changing.

- Natural-born citizen clause - to protect the country from Presidents with allegiances to other nations.

- By the full conscientious choice of the Constitution writers, NBC was enshrined in the Constitution along with other rules for Presidential eligibility, but NBC itself was NOT legally defined.

- Where the Constitution left off on NBC, Presidential eligibility and candidates’ fitness for office, included their allegiances, elected officials and the public took over - elected officials to complete the law, which might change, and the public, both in electing the officials and in scrutinizing the Presidential candidates.

[Behind the Blue Wall]

It seems likely to me that the court system will continue to avoid this as a “political question” so in a sense you are probably right. But . . . it is then left up to us voters to decide for ourselves how we want to interpret that, and for me, I think it’s clear that they were looking to prevent people with potential secret foreign allegiances by virtue of their birth. In that sense, I do think the Vattel definition (born on the soil, to parents who are both U.S. citizens) is the definition that most forecloses the possibility of divided allegiances.

[odawg]

“Natural-born citizens are the nation’s “posterity” that the Constitution was ordained and established to secure.”

Correct, also, the “posterity” of naturalized citizens, whose children become natural born citizens.

The Naturalization Act of 1790, which was written shortly after the Constitution, and by the same people who wrote the Constitution, defines the natural born clause that they wrote into the Constitution. It clearly defines what a natural born citizen is, and it only descends through the father. And the meaning associated with the term as it was understood at the time of adoption of the Constitution is locked into the Constitution and can only be changed through the amendment process.

Due to a Supreme Court decision in 1930, NATURALIZED citizenship can descend through the mother.

Under your screwy logic, the natural born clause would have been useless to insert into the Constitution as a qualification to be president.

[Political Junkie Too]

Not "screwy" logic.

As I posted, "If you are an alien who becomes a naturalized citizen, you become one of We the People, and then your children that follow become the nation's posterity... the citizen People and their citizen children."

Or in the language of the Preamble, "ourselves and our Posterity."

-PJ