Open request to Senator Cruz

[big bad easter bunny]

The Constitution requires that for you to be eligible to be president, both of your parents must be naturally born citizens. You do not meet that qualification, if I am wrong please straiten me out. If you get the nomination I promise you the democrats will do what the republicans are too scared to do.

Dear Ted I think you are awesome but we all need to know the answer to this.

[Jarhead9297]

I’m not a fan of folks labeling those who wish to debate the topic birthers. It’s akin to liberals wishing to silence their critics and shutting down debate by calling them tea baggers. In fact I believe the term birthers was thrown out by liberals anyway to do just that, shut down debate by besmearching and belittling those who disagree. Not a fan. Any who there are those who do have an interest in knowing the true answer to this. Today it is nebulous and definitely worth debate. It doesn’t mean someone hates Cruz. It means someone cares enough to ask a valid question because they care dearly to prevent usurpers from entering the people’s house as is the case today.

[Jimmy Valentine's brother]

if I am wrong please straiten (sic) me out.

Time for the big bad easter bunny to hippity hop over to the dictionary.

And yes, big bad easter bunny you are incorrect about Senator Cruz's citizenship.

[tioga]

L O L

[CpnHook]

Also, can you cite any contemporaneous reference from the late 18th century expounding that notion that natural born citizenship requires only one co-citizen parent?

Zephaniah Swift, a judge, lawyer, and U.S. Representative from Connecticut wrote the first legal treatise published in the U.S.. In it he writes:

“It is an established maxim, received by all political writers, that every person owes a natural allegiance to the government of that country in which he is born. Allegiance is defined to be a tie, that binds the subject to the state, and in consequence of his obedience, he is entitled to protection… The children of aliens, born in this state, are considered as natural born subjects, and have the same rights with the rest of the citizens.”

Zephaniah Swift, A system of the laws of the state of Connecticut (1795)

Note his use of "natural born subject," which he puts together with "citizen." "Natural born subject" and "natural born citizen" were often used rather interchangeably from the time of the Revolution through the adoption of the Constitution. It is a reflection of the degree to which the lawyers and politicians of the age were steeped in the English common law -- the terminology was often adopted and adapted within the new Constitutional system, a point the U.S. Supreme Court has observed. (For another illustration, see Post #112 above.)

And what Swift writes in the late 18th century about state law is echoed in the early 19th century by William Rawle:

Therefore every person born within the United States, its territories or districts, whether the parents are citizens or aliens, is a natural born citizen in the sense of the Constitution, and entitled to all the rights and privileges appertaining to that capacity.”

William Rawle, A View of the Constitution of the United States, pg. 86 (1829)

And nothing from English Çommon Law, please, we are speaking here of the nascent United States.

The above isn't from the English common law (Swift and Rawles are American writers opining on the law here), but it does illustrate how the terminology of the ECL was followed and adapted into our Constitutional system.

[CpnHook]

P.S. The above focuses on the native-born. Historically, that has been the focus of writers on the Constitution. The situation of those born abroad isn't as clear-cut. There were several articles and viewpoints issued concerning George Romney in 1968 (born in Mexico to parents who were both U.S.citizens.) Opinions varied.

The case of a person born abroad to just one citizen parent is largely just an extension of those earlier views.

[3D-JOY]

Hi there,
Nice to see you!!

[John Valentine]

You have convinced me that this issue has been troubled for a very long time, and that there was indeed contemporary dissent on the point that ought to have been dispelled by using language less ambiguous.

[CpnHook]

You have convinced me that this issue has been troubled for a very long time, and that there was indeed contemporary dissent on the point[.]

I commend that you're willing to consider the source material I provided. Though I don't want to leave it suggested that what I was provided was the "contemporary dissent." To the contrary, it was the prevalent view.

The Founders and Framers were steeped in the English common law. Blackstone's Commentaries was THE handbook on the law. It was Blackstone who wrote:

The children of aliens, born here in England, are, generally speaking, natural-born subjects, and entitled to all the privileges of such.

Commentaries, Book I, Ch. 10.

Note Blackstone's phrasing. Can there be any doubt that when Swift write:

The children of aliens, born in this state, are considered as natural born subjects, and have the same rights with the rest of the citizens.”

and that when Rawle writes:

Therefore every person born within the United States .. . whether the parents are citizens or aliens, is a natural born citizen . . . and entitled to all the rights and privileges appertaining to that capacity.

that they are, when stating the American citizenship rule, echoing the language of Blackstone?

As noted, in the period from the Revolution to the adoption of the Constitution, there are many instances that can be documented where Americans used "natural born subject" and "natural born citizen" in interchangeable fashion. And "natural born subject" was understood (via Blackstone and the ECL) to have a well-known and accepted jus soli meaning. By contrast, there is no usage during this period of the English phrase "natural born citizen" where it conveys the meaning "from like parents." None.

So when one arrives at the drafting of the Constitution, it is fatuous to argue that the Framers employed terminology("natural born citizen") that was so similar to (and previously interchangeable with) its English common law counterpart ("natural born subject"), but that they intended "NBC" to now have a different, jus sanguinis meaning, and that they did this without leaving any record of discussion or explanation that they were adopting a different understanding!

I don't think there was much ambiguity.

The "two citizen parent" theory (as to the native born) is historically untenable (and in light of U.S. v. Wong Kim Ark legally a non-starter). "No person except one born of citizen parents" would have covered it, if that was the intent.

[4Zoltan]

"on the point that ought to have been dispelled by using language less ambiguous."

Your sentiments echo those of Alexander Hamilton. In 1795 he wrote a legal brief about carriage taxes. He begins by saying,

"What is the distinction between direct and indirect taxes? It is a matter of regret that terms so uncertain and vague in so important a point are to be found in the Constitution. We shall seek in vain for any antecedent settled legal meaning to the respective terms—there is none.”

He then goes on to explain the meaning of excise taxes and he finishes the brief by saying,

"If the meaning of the word excise is to be sought in the British statutes, it will be found to include the duty on carriages, which is there considered as an excise, and then must necessarily be uniform and liable to apportionment; consequently, not a direct tax.”

“Some argument results from this, though not perhaps a conclusive one: yet where so important a distinction in the Constitution is to be realized, it is fair to seek the meaning of terms in the statutory language of that country from which our jurisprudence is derived.”

[RickBulow74]

Ping me on this please.

This is right in my wheelhouse.

[DiogenesLamp]

You have convinced me that this issue has been troubled for a very long time, and that there was indeed contemporary dissent on the point that ought to have been dispelled by using language less ambiguous.

I see CpnHook has been feeding you his usual line of utter crap. If someone doesn't watch and confront him, he works in the background spreading his FALSE arguments.

I have a mountain of evidence that disproves his crap, but of course he won't show you any of it. He is pushing an agenda and he makes no effort to present the alternative evidence.

I will point out that the Constitution was Written in Philadelphia Pennsylvania, which was at that time one of the most important centers of Law for the nation. The people most likely to understand what was meant by "Natural Born Citizen" would have been the legal community of Pennsylvania. (British Trained Lawyer and son of British Loyalist during the war William Rawle excepted.)

Well what did the Preeminent Legal minds of Philadelphia think on the matter? Specifically the Judges of the Pennsylvania Supreme court? Well i'll show you.

From the book "A digest of select British statutes : comprising those which, according to the report of the judges of the Supreme Court made to the legislature, appear to be in force, in Pennsylvania, with some others, with notes and illustrations (1817)"

Now CpnHook has been beaten over the head with this too many times to count, but did he think it worth showing you? There is a lot more, but he won't show you that stuff either.

[SoConPubbie]

You’ve been added to the Ted Cruz Ping List!

[CpnHook]

I see CpnHook has been feeding you his usual line of utter crap. If someone doesn't watch and confront him, he works in the background spreading his FALSE arguments.

LOL. And you're not likely to be that person, at least not for long. It usually only takes a few iterations till I confront you with a question you can't answer or point out one of your usual inconsistencies and then you head for the hills with the "you're not worth my time" face-saving attempt. I wasn't even going to bother to reply to anything of yours on these recent threads. Well, here you are.

I have a mountain of evidence that disproves his crap,

No, you don't. You've got at best two or three isolated historical sources, whereas I've got a whole lot more running consistently from the late 18th century through the next 100 years, at which point the SCOTUS does a body-slam on your argument. So, the way this will play out is you'll offer your few bits, then I'll reply with far more examples to refute that, at which point you haul out the "you're arguing from authority" stupidity. Want to go another round?

He is pushing an agenda .. .

One agenda I will freely admit is correcting those who quote-mine judicial opinions with little sense of context and judicial method and who generally botch it when they delve into legal history and interpretation. You are an exemplar in that class.

Well what did the Preeminent Legal minds of Philadelphia think on the matter?

This is a work by one author, Samuel Roberts, and a fairly obscure one historically-speaking, at that(his bio doesn't exactly pop right up if one goes looking). To posture that this is some work-product of the whole legal community is dishonest.

British Trained Lawyer and son of British Loyalist during the war William Rawle excepted.

Your theory that all was happily jus sanguinis until Rawle came along is poppycock. Thirty years before Rawle published his work, Jonathan Swift echoed the same sentiment, as I noted above:

“It is an established maxim, received by all political writers, that every person owes a natural allegiance to the government of that country in which he is born. Allegiance is defined to be a tie, that binds the subject to the state, and in consequence of his obedience, he is entitled to protection… The children of aliens, born in this state, are considered as natural born subjects, and have the same rights with the rest of the citizens.”

Zephaniah Swift, A system of the laws of the state of Connecticut (1795)

He's writing a mere 8 years after the Constitution was drafted, and he says the same thing that Rawle later says.

Yes, Rawle was British influenced, but so was pretty much every lawyer, theorist, and politician from the time of the Revolution till the framing of the Constitution. And the reason for that is everyone was steeped in Blackstone and the English common law. I'll here add a few sources, though I could multiply these several times over:

It is interesting to speculate how Blackstone would have refined his writings had he known that they would be devoured so heartily by the Colonists3 and utilized to encourage their rebellion against the Crown to which his loyalties belonged. The Commentaries were so well received by the Colonists that Edmund Burke noted in 1775 that nearly as many of Blackstone's Commentaries had been sold in America as in England.4 At least one thousand copies of the English edition had been sold in the United States by 1771, prompting printer Robert Bell of Philadelphia to propose a domestic edition. Fifteen hundred of these sets were ordered by lawyers, judges, public officers, and interested laymen throughout the Colonies.

Kent Schmidt, "Blackstone's View of Natural Law and Its Influence on the Formation of American Declaration of Independence and the Constitution" http://www.uark.edu/depts/comminfo/cambridge/blackstone.html

“Blackstone’s Commentaries had a wide circulation in America at the time of the Constitutional Convention. It is said that sixteen signers of the Declaration of Independence knew the book cover to cover. A source book of legal science, a landmark in law and literature. It is safe to say that it contents were familiar to every American lawyer in public life in 1789 and 1791.

Sunray Oil Corp. v. Allbritton , 187 F.2d 475,478 (5th Cir. 1951)

They were in this sense all "British trained."

So, no surprise, the most prominent legal scholars and commentators echo the jus soli view inherited from Blackstone and the ECL:

“That provision in the constitution which requires that the president shall be a native-born citizen (unless he were a citizen of the United States when the constitution was adopted) is a happy means of security against foreign influence,…A very respectable political writer makes the following pertinent remarks upon this subject. “Prior to the adoption of the constitution, the people inhabiting the different states might be divided into two classes: natural born citizens, or those born within the state, and aliens, or such as were born out of it.”

St. George Tucker, Blackstone's Commentaries (1803)

“And if, at common law, all human beings born within the ligeance of the King, and under the King’s obedience, were natural-born subjects, and not aliens, I do not perceive why this doctrine does not apply to these United States, in all cases in which there is no express constitutional or statute declaration to the contrary. . . . Subject and citizen are, in a degree, convertible terms as applied to natives, and though the term citizen seems to be appropriate to republican freemen, yet we are, equally with the inhabitants of all other countries, subjects, for we are equally bound by allegiance and subjection to the government and law of the land.”

“As the President is required to be a native citizen of the United States…. Natives are all persons born within the jurisdiction and allegiance of the United States.”

James Kent, Commentaries on American Law, (1826)

“Allegiance is nothing more than the tie or duty of obedience of a subject to the sovereign under whose protection he is, and allegiance by birth is that which arises from being born within the dominions and under the protection of a particular sovereign. Two things usually concur to create citizenship: first, birth locally within the dominions of the sovereign, and secondly, birth within the protection and obedience, or, in other words, within the allegiance of the sovereign…. That the father and mother of the demandant were British born subjects is admitted. If he was born before 4 July, 1776, it is as clear that he was born a British subject. If he was born after 4 July, 1776, and before 15 September, 1776 [the date the British occupied New York], he was born an American citizen, whether his parents were at the time of his birth British subjects or American citizens. Nothing is better settled at the common law than the doctrine that the children even of aliens born in a country while the parents are resident there under the protection of the government and owing a temporary allegiance thereto are subjects by birth.”

Justice Story, concurring opinion, Inglis v. Sailors’ Snug Harbor, 3 Pet. 99, 155,164. (1830)

That should suffice for now.

So what about Samuel Roberts? His legal career was solely within the confines of Pennsylvania. He had no federal legislative experience (like Zephaniah Swift) nor was he on the federal bench (like Supreme Court Justice Story, nominated by James Madison) or St. George Tucker (appointed by James Madison). He's writing in 1817, about 20 years after the English addition of Vattel was published which first contained the rendering "natural born citizen" in section 212. It seems he picked up a copy and may have linked the usage in that edition with the Constitutional term and thought the earlier derived from the later. In any case, I've yet to find anyone (other than you) citing Robert's book, certainly his name doesn't arise in any subsequent legal or historical dispute on citizenship.

Now CpnHook has been beaten over the head with this too many times to count, but did he think it worth showing you? There is a lot more, but he won't show you that stuff either.

Now you and I both fully know you can posture, but you can't deliver.

[CpnHook]

Correction: Make the first reference to Swift “Zephaniah,” not “Jonathan.”

[re_nortex]

This website supports tea party constitutionalist Ted Cruz for president to the hilt.

If Free Republic is behind Senator Ted Cruz, then so am I! Mr. Robinson has researched the eligibility matter in depth and has -- rightly -- concluded that Senator Cruz meets the requirements for the office.

I'll also add that, in spite of not being born on Texas soil, Ted Cruz is a lot more genuinely Texan than those fortunate enough to have been born here such as Dan Rather, Lyin' Lyndon Baines Johnson, Domingo Garcia, John Wiley Price, Bob Schieffer and thousands of others like them.

[DiogenesLamp]

I am not going to read your wall of text.

[CpnHook]

I am not going to read your wall of text.

Of course, because 100 years of case law and commentary on citizenship must be encapsulated into a few short paragraphs so it's not too difficult for you. It's no wonder I had to break down the Wong Kim Ark opinion into small pieces and spoon-feed it to you so you'd stop misstating it. It's 55 pages long; clearly, you hadn't read through it.

But here's the Readers' Digest condensed version of my prior post.

1. Why are you interjecting yourself into my comments on this topic, as you and I both know you'll quickly bale out when I start presenting points and questions that will cause your position to blow up the moment you attempt to answer.

2. You have no "mountain of evidence."

3. Your theory that all was happily jus sanguinis until Rawle came along is poppycock. I've presented 3 prominent writers who articulate the same jus soli principal as Rawle, but earlier, in 1795, 1803, and 1826, as well as a Supreme Court justice the year after Rawle.

4. Everyone was "British trained" since everyone was steeped in Blackstone and the ECL.

5. I didn't post Samuel Roberts comment, because I wasn't attempting a full survey in the least (odd that you suggest I should add more when the bits I show you deride as a "wall of text") and, in any event, i) Samuel Roberts is a relatively obscure figure, historically speaking, ii) his legal career was solely within Pennsylvania, unlike Swift (judge and U.S. Congressman), Tucker (federal judge appointed by James Madison) or Joseph Story (SCOTUS justice nominated by James Madison), and iii) his work was never cited (to my knowledge) in any of the cases or discussions on citizenship which took place over the century following, and but for Google Books making term-searching of largely obscure old texts possible, he wouldn't be in this discussion presently.

There. Easier now?

[DiogenesLamp]

I am not going to bother reading that either. You are an @$$ with an overinflated sense of your own intelligence and self importance. I am not interested in communicating with you because I have experience with the futility of doing so in the past.

You cannot produce a single source that is as good as my sources and you simply keep repeating the same old crap ad infinitum.

I am interested in what the other man has to say, I am not interested in anything you have to say. You are just a true-beliver shill, and evidence is pointless with you.

[CpnHook]

You are an @$$ with an overinflated sense of your own intelligence and self importance.

Anyone who has read through your past dialogues on this topic and observed the haughty tone you affect as to others will be laughing mightily as the pot calls the kettle black.

I am not interested in communicating with you because I have experience with the futility of doing so in the past.

Right. I make points and ask questions that make your argument look bad. I understand.

You cannot produce a single source that is as good as my sources

Right, because Supreme Court Justice Story is just a nobody compared to the illustrious state court judge Samuel Roberts (a person no one has even bothered to make a Wikipedia bio for). Yeah, great source you got there. Impressive.

and you simply keep repeating the same old crap ad infinitum.

Because it's shut you down cold in the past, and I know it will in the present. That's why the first thing I said in my initial post to you here is that all you'll do is posture like you have great things and then bale out.

Boy, called that one, didn't I?

[DiogenesLamp]

Right. I make points and ask questions that make your argument look bad. I understand.

No, you cannot, but you persist anyway. You talk about Rawle and Story, but you completely ignore the far better qualified and knowledgeable Chief Justice John Marshall Or Washington's Nephew Justice Bushrod Washington, both of which explicitly cite Vattel as the authority on issues involving citizenship.

No body wants to hear your rehash of your second string "authorities". You misstate and/or ignore anything which challenges your personal desire to believe an utterly pointless interpretation, and I have no interest in wasting my time with you.

I have taken apart your stupid assertions so many times that I no longer bother even perusing your babble.

Again, I don't care what you think, you are a loud mouthed idiot intent on spreading disinformation. I am only interested in what potentially objective people think, and you aren't one of them.