Posted on 01/28/2016 12:59:06 PM PST by Kaslin
If you attend a presidential campaign event, you may come across someone wearing colonial garb or an Uncle Sam costume or body paint. But a Ted Cruz rally in Iowa last weekend featured something possibly unprecedented: guys dressed up as Royal Canadian Mounted Police.
This was not a random choice of attire. The guys in scarlet tunics were protesters, who passed out copies of Cruz's Canadian birth certificate to highlight the questions about his eligibility for the American presidency. The Constitution says the president must be "a natural born citizen" of the United States.
There is no dispute that the Texas senator was a U.S. citizen from birth, since his mother was an American. Donald Trump has raised questions, though, about whether Cruz, being born in the great state of Alberta, qualifies as "a natural born citizen."
Cruz dismisses the issue. "It's settled law," he says. "As a legal matter it's quite straightforward." In fact, it's never been settled, it's not straightforward and some experts don't agree with his reading.
The fact that it was Trump who raised the issue made it deeply suspect. But though it's unlikely that anything coming out of Trump's mouth is true, it's not impossible. And his claim that this is an unresolved question that could end up throwing the election into doubt happens to be correct.
When it comes to parsing the crucial phrase, Harvard law professor Laurence Tribe has noted, "No Supreme Court decision in the past two centuries has ever done so. In truth, the constitutional definition of a 'natural born citizen' is completely unsettled."
Tribe says that under an originalist interpretation of the Constitution -- the type Cruz champions -- he "wouldn't be eligible, because the legal principles that prevailed in the 1780s and '90s required that someone actually be born on U.S. soil to be a 'natural born citizen.'"
Cruz retorted that this is just what you'd expect from a "left-wing judicial activist." But Tribe, an eminent constitutional scholar, is not so predictable. He surprised gun-rights advocates years ago, before the landmark Supreme Court decisions on the Second Amendment, when he said it protects an individual right to own firearms.
Even if he's a judicial activist, the Supreme Court might agree with him. Cruz should know as much, because he has denounced the court for its "lawlessness," "imperial tendencies" and, yes, "judicial activism."
Nor is Tribe alone among experts. University of Chicago law professor Eric Posner says, "The ordinary meaning of the language suggests to me that one must be born on U.S. territory." Chapman University's Ronald Rotunda, co-author of a widely used constitutional law textbook, told me a couple of weeks ago he had no doubt that Cruz is eligible. But when he investigated the issue, he concluded that under the relevant Supreme Court precedents, "Cruz simply is not a natural born citizen."
Catholic University law professor Sarah Helene Duggin wrote in 2005, "Natural born citizenship is absolutely certain only for United States citizens born post-statehood in one of the fifty states, provided that they are not members of Native American tribes."
Steven Lubet, a Northwestern University law professor, spies another possible land mine. Cruz qualified for citizenship because his mother was an American citizen (unlike his father). But "under the law in effect in 1970, Cruz would only have acquired U.S. citizenship if his mother had been 'physically present' in the United States for ten years prior to his birth, including five years after she reached the age of fourteen," Lubet wrote in Salon.
That raises two questions: Did she live in this country for the required amount of time? And can the Cruz family prove it?
Whether the justices would take the case is another question. Unless some state election official bars him from the ballot on constitutional grounds or a rival candidate goes to court, it's unlikely a lawsuit would get a hearing. But if that happens, the Court may elect to resolve the matter -- and no one can be confident of the ultimate verdict.
Trump, believe it or not, is onto something. Cruz's candidacy suffers a potentially fatal defect. If Cruz is nominated or elected, he could be disqualified. When Republican voters cast their ballots, they have to ask themselves: Is he worth the risk?
Since everyone agrees that the 14th Amendment was written for the sole purpose of protecting the rights of freed slaves, the 14th Amendment should be repealed.
This would undo Roe v. Wade and a host of other wretched jurisprudence purportedly based on the 14th Amendment.
The State of Hawaii can issue all the letters and statements it pleases. The “birth certificate” on the White House website is a crude, blatant forgery displaying dozens of laughable blunders and anomalies. It is certainly not an image of any piece of paper that has existed since 1961 in the possession of the State of Hawaii.
If Soetoro’s grandmother filled out a form with the Hawaii Dep’t of Health in 1961, absolutely regardless of where Soetoro was actually born, the newspaper announcements would have appeared.
The newspapers’ entries were in the “Health Bureau Statistics” sections of the papers. The data came from the Hawaii Health Bureau which is what the Department of Health was called back in 1961, along with marriage certificates issued and death certificates issued. The Obama Certificate of Live Birth is signed by Stanley Ann Dunham and Dr. David A Sinclair, MD. Attending Physician at Kapi’olani Hospital. Verna K.L Lee also signed as Local Registrar.
http://whatreallyhappened.com/IMAGES/obama-1961-birth-announcement-from-honolulu-advertiser0000.gif
So?
The “birth certificate” is a crude, laughable forgery.
The proper authority is the Twelfth Amendment.
Turns out I'm wrong.
If no presidential candidate wins the majority (after any electoral votes are tossed, based on whatever criteria the Congress can agree upon), then the House picks the President, and the Senate the Vice President (if, as is highly likely, he also fails to win a majority of the electoral vote). But, if the House can't agree on the new President by 4 March, then the VP becomes President. And, if by then, the Senate hasn't picked a VP, then WTF knows?
But my real point was, the courts don't get to judge eligibility. It's up to Congress, as (somewhat) clearly set forth in the Constitution!
I think that's an open question, and it plays at several points in the process.
Taking just the final counting and selection of a president elect by Congress, the constitution doesn't clearly prohibit the court from review, and unlike judging qualification for House and Senate, doesn't clearly assign any branch the job of deciding qualification for the office of president. Amar and Balkin have expounded on this, coming down on opposite sides of court review.
I think the courts would review it, or could, just by asserting themselves into the process. What could Congress do about that? A fundamental argument in favor is preservation of checks between branches. If Congress goes rouge or derelict (as it habitually does), the subversion should not be conclusive.
Then it would have been a very good idea at some point over the last nine years to have a prosecuting attorney initiate a Grand Jury investigation of that crude, laughable forgery.
Forgery is a crime and crimes are not adjudicated via lawsuits.
The problem with trying to repeal the 14th Amendment is that its Citizenship Clause says “ALL PERSONS...” and not all persons formerly held in slavery or involuntary servitude.
The 13th Amendment, by way of contrast, is specific: “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.”
The landmark Supreme Court decision on citizenship under the 14th Amendment is U.S. v Wong Kim Ark (1898) and Wong Kim Ark was never a slave.
The language of the amendment is irrelevant to whether the amendment can be repealed. Once it’s repealed, it’s repealed.
Yes, it SAYS “all persons.” But it was intended to protect freed slaves. Since they are all now dead, the amendment should be repealed. And 150 years of ABUSIVE INTERPRETATIONS (The “incorporation doctrine,” Roe v. Wade, anchor babies, etc., etc.) of the amendment would be swept away.
The 13th Amendment would remain. The repeal of the 14th Amendment would not legalize slavery.
If 38 states go for repeal, it would happen. However the Constitution prohibits ex post facto laws [Article 1, Sections 9 & 10] so repeal would have no impact on anyone or anything that occurred before the repeal was adopted.
ineligible bump
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