SatinDoll wrote:
[I had quoted:] ““It is well settled that ‘native-born’ citizens, those born in the United States, qualify as natural born.” [Jill Pryor, ‘The Natural-Born Citizen Clause and Presidential Eligibility’, 97 Yale Law Journal 881-889 (1988).]”
It is her opinion, NOT settled law. I’ve already told you once, she is a left-wing shill.
Pryor’s assertion passed peer review to appear in the Yale Law Review. What’s more, no one can find any record of anyone disagreeing — that is — not until just recently when people wanted to argue that Barack Obama is not allowed to be president. If I’m wrong on that and, as you claim, it was not settled law in 1988, just show me some reference from our time — but before Obama became a candidate — that disagreed. Please don’t bother showing arguments from before U.S. v. Wong Kim Ark was dicided (1898), or talking about people born before the 14’th Amendment (1868). I’m not claiming that it was already clear and settled when Charles Evans Hughes was born in 1862.
What have you got? As I cited to literature of the discipline, Gordon wrote that the eligibility of the native-born was clear in 1968, and Prior wrote that it was well-settled in 1988. Do you have evidence to the contrary, or was the name-calling the best you can do?
Pryor and Gordon had no partisan axe to grind. As history turned out, their articles helped Republican presidential candidate John S. McCain III. While the eligibility of the native-born was already clear and well settled, “whether a person born abroad of American parents, or of one American and one alien parent, qualifies as natural born has never been resolved.” [Pryor 1988] John McCain was just such a person, and their papers helped resovle that he was eligible.
I don’t give a damn whether Pryor’s assertion passed peer review to appear in the Yale Law Review. Yale, Harvard, and Princeton do NOT make U.S. law; Congress makes U.S.law and SCOTUS determines its constitutionality.
Whatever universities fancy academically for the moment means NOTHING. Hell, seventy years ago many of those same universities thought Mussolini was a genius!
Read the following information on Panama and citizenship carefully, and remember - citizenship does not equal ‘natural born citizen’.
Panama Canal Zone
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panama_Canal_Zone
CITIZENSHIP
Although the Panama Canal Zone was legally an unincorporated U.S. territory until the implementation of the Torrijos-Carter Treaties in 1979, questions arose almost from its inception as to whether the Zone was considered part of the United States for constitutional purposes, or, in the phrase of the day, whether the Constitution followed the flag. In 1901 the U.S. Supreme Court had ruled in Downes v. Bidwell that unincorporated territories are not the United States.{3] On July 28, 1904, Controller of the Treasury Robert Tracewell stated: “While the general spirit and purpose of the Constitution is applicable to the zone, that domain is not a part of the United States within the full meaning of the Constitution and laws of the country.”[4] Accordingly, the Supreme Court held in 1905 in Rasmussen v. United States that the full Constitution only applies for incorporated territories of the United States.[5] Until the rulings in these so-called “Insular Cases”, children born of two U.S. citizens in the Canal Zone had been subject to the Naturalization Act of 1795, which granted statutory U.S. citizenship at birth. With the ruling of 1905 persons born in the Canal Zone only became U.S. nationals, not citizens.[6] This no man’s land with regard to U.S. citizenship was perpetuated until Congress passed legislation in 1937, which corrected this deficiency. The law is now codified under title 8 section 1403.[7] It not only grants statutory and declaratory born citizenship to those born in the Canal Zone after February 26, 1904, with at least one U.S. citizen parent, but also did so retroactively for all children born of at least one U.S. citizen in the Canal Zone before the law’s enactment.[8]
References
1. “Panamanian Control”, Panama Canal, infoplease.com, http://www.infoplease.com/ce6/world/A0860218.html, retrieved 2008-06-02
2. Rhonda D. Frederic (2005), Colón Man a Come”: Mythographies Of Panama Canal Migration, Lexington Books, p. 33, ISBN :0739108913, http://books.google.com/?id=CSNTpYIB228C
3. United States Supreme Court, Downes v. Bidwell.
4. (PDF) Not Part of United States, The New York Times, July 29, 1904, http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?res=9C06E1DF113BE631A2575AC2A9619C946597D6CF, retrieved 2008-06-02 |
5. United States Supreme Court, [1].
6. “Nationality” in: 7 FAM 1111.3 (c).
7. 8 U.S.C. § 1403
8. Cf. 8 U.S.C. § 1403, paragraph (a): “whether before or after the effective date of this chapter”.
Quote from above: “,,,grants statutory and declaratory born citizenship to those born in the Canal Zone after February 26, 1904,..but also did so retroactively for all children born of at least one U.S. citizen in the Canal Zone before the law’s enactment.”
Being a citizen DOES NOT equal natural born citizenship.
John S. McCain is not a natural born citizen. Congress can only change the U.S.Constitution through amendment, and that requires the approval of a majority of the states.
Neither Obama nor McCain are natural born citizens; therefore they are not eligible to be President of the U.S.A.