Judge Emmet Sullivan Rules 14th Amendment Did Not Repeal Natural Born Citizen Requirement

ORYR ^ | Monday, October 1, 2012

[Red Steel]

U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan Rules Natural Born Citizen Requirement Not Repealed By The 14th Amendment Or The 5th Amendment

Abdul Karim Hassan vs FEC - Court Opinion - District Court for the District of Columbia - 10/1/2012

MEMORANDUM OPINION

"Plaintiff Abdul Karim Hassan brings this action against the Federal Election Commission (“FEC”), seeking a declaratory judgment that (1) the Presidential Election Campaign Fund Act, 26 U.S.C. §§ 9001-9013, which provides public funding to Presidential nominees of major or minor political parties, is unconstitutional and invalid, and (2) the natural born citizen clause of the Constitution1 is irreconcilable with, and has been “trumped, abrogated and implicitly repealed” by, the Equal Protection guarantee of the Fifth Amendment and the Citizenship Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment."

--JUMP--

"Hassan’s challenge to the Fund Act rests on his contention that the natural born citizen requirement has been implicitly repealed by the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments. The Court need not repeat the thorough and persuasive opinions issued by its colleagues in at least five other jurisdictions, all of whom determined that the natural born citizen requirement has not been implicitly repealed by the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments."

"Moreover, the Supreme Court has consistently held that the distinction between natural born citizens and naturalized citizens in the context of Presidential eligibility remains valid."

"Because the natural born citizen requirement has not been explicitly or implicitly repealed, Hassan’s challenge to that provision, and the Fund Act’s incorporation thereof, must fail."

CONTINUED HERE: http://www.scribd.com/doc/108620619/Abdul-Karim-Hassan-vs-FEC-Court-Opinion-District-Court-for-the-District-of-Columbia-10-1-2012

MORE HERE: http://www.fec.gov/press/press2012/20121001_Hassan_v._FEC.shtml

BACKGROUND ON HASSAN'S CASE HERE: http://obamareleaseyourrecords.blogspot.com/2011/09/fec-unanimously-ruled-foreign-born.html

[Red Steel]

And that’s what I’m really saying too only 2. Those naturalized and natural born.

Naturalized citizens also include citizens born under the aegis of the 14th Amendment, and all others are natural born citizens.

[WildHighlander57]

sometime Lurker,
I hear ya, I’ve read the posts :0

Sven,
Let’s see what ya got..... or is it the “fish that got away”?

Hmmmm, little kitty cats LOVE fish ;) lutefisk especially ;) ;)

[Red Steel]

Even though Minor dealt with women suffrage the Supreme Court directly construed the Constitutional Natural Born Citizen clause to find Ms. Minor a natural born citizen, which is the same eligible criteria used, as you know, for would be citizens who run to be president.

[null and void]

Constitutional Eligibility

[thecodont]

Thanks for the ping!

[DiogenesLamp]

AWESOME!!! That's what we have been telling these idiots. The 14th Amendment did NOT REPEAL Article II requirements. Natural born citizens are NOT CREATED by the action of the 14th amendment. They exist independently of any action by the 14th amendment.

Any citizen who is only a citizen through the action of the 14th amendment is not a "natural citizen." Any citizen who is only a citizen through subsequent acts of legislation are also not "natural citizens". They are instead naturalized citizens so created through the explicit powers granted to congress to create naturalize citizens.

We are making progress. It's slow, but we are steadily making progress.

Now all we have to do is prove that the many thousands of British loyalists who were born in the United States, remained British citizens, and not US Citizens, and that both Nations recognized this fact.

[DiogenesLamp]

My guess is that this opinion will not hold.

I would like to hear arguments claiming that the 14th repealed article II. What are they going to say? That "Our citizens were natural before, but now they are even more natural!"?

Seriously, it is ridiculous to believe that you can change the meaning of "natural citizen" after the fact. "Natural Citizens" did not need the 14th amendment to be "natural citizens." (Minor v Happersett.)

And for what it's worth, a citizen with divided allegiance is not a "natural citizen." If you can be forced into another nation's army, you aren't the President we've been looking for.

[longtermmemmory]

so if some crazy nation has a consciption law that allows going 10 generations back it would disqualify someone?

[Seizethecarp]

While the Constitution says that a person must be NBC to be president neither it nor any Scotus ruling says that ALL NBC persons are eligible to be president.

Women were obviously presumed to be excluded from POTUS eligibility at the time of the Minor decision and Mrs. Minor wasn't even allowed to vote despite being held to be NBC by SCOTUS!

Thus I conclude that the Minor v. Happersett decision was NOT made in the context of defining presidential eligibility. IMO that would only occur when the eligibility of a presidential candidate with a non-US citizen father or mother is challenged by a plaintiff with standing and the case comes before SCOTUS.

Maybe that will happen this month on an emergency basis.

[DiogenesLamp]

Scalia opinion

I'm not a research service, so you're on your own for the rest.

You should give people warning when you are linking to Dr. Conspiracy. I don't want to give that @sshole the traffic!

I am convinced that anyone relying on precedent doesn't know the correct answer, and I am also of the opinion that the vast majority of Legal people tend to rely on Precedent without bothering to research something from first principles.

After the Revolutionary war, there were many thousands, (perhaps hundreds of thousands) of British Loyalists who were born here, yet did not want to be Americans. Neither the US Government, nor the British Government regarded them as anything other than British Citizens.

At this time in History, Neither the U.S. nor the British believed in voluntary expatriation. You either were, or were not a citizen of a specific country, and if you were, you did not have a right to change your citizenship.

The Right to expatriation was not recognized in the United States until sometime around 1850. (If I recall correctly.) None of the founders would have been stupid enough to believe that the child of a British Loyalist, born here after July 4, 1776 was an American citizen, simply because he was born here. Indeed, here is a comment from James Monroe in a Letter Dated July 4, 1795.

A Mr Eldred was lately apprehended at Marseilles and sent here under guard upon a charge of having given intelligence to the British of some movement in the French fleet. Upon inquiry I found he had my passport granted too upon the most substantial documents proving him to be an American citizen; but I likewise found that in truth he was not an American citizen, for although born in America yet he was not there in the course of our revolution but in England, nor had he been there since. From what I hear of him, he is not a person of mischevious disposition nor one who would be apt to commit the offence charged upon him, but yet I do not see how I can officially interfere in his behalf, for when once a principle is departed from, it ceases to be a principle.

Notice how he could not interfere with the man's arrest because he did not regard him as an American citizen?

Allegiance was the defining factor in those days, not soil.

[DiogenesLamp]

Don’t get your hopes up - Sven frequently makes wild statements that he never backs up.

Ah, and here you are? Take note of the James Monroe comment I posted above.

[DiogenesLamp]

I am read the opinion. It states there are only two citizens. There is no discussion at all to the “birther” issue. It is in the link.

A legal opinion which says the 14th Amendment did not repeal Article II, is ground zero of the "birther" debate. We "birthers" have been saying all along, that 14th amendment citizenship is not the same thing as "natural citizenship." Natural citizenship does not require a 14th amendment.

If you have to rely on the 14th amendment to be a citizen, then you are not a "natural citizen". You are a citizen by the operation of a man made law.

[djf]

Many have tried to say there is only one type of citizenship you can get from birth.

This is simply not true.

A person who has “citizenship” because of the 14th amendment may or in fact may not be a “natural born citizen”.

The operation of the 14th amendment CANNOT make a person who would otherwise not be a “natural born citizen” into a natural born citizen. No operation of law or statute can do that.

[DiogenesLamp]

Even though Minor dealt with women suffrage the Supreme Court directly construed the Constitutional Natural Born Citizen clause to find Ms. Minor a natural born citizen, which is the same eligible criteria used, as you know, for would be citizens who run to be president.

I think Seven years after the ratification of the 14th amendment, the most Telling phrase in the Minor v Happersett ruling is:

The Constitution does not, in words, say who shall be natural-born citizens.

The 14th Amendment very obviously says who shall be "citizens", but it conspicuously does not use the phrase "natural born citizens". I read this as the court saying explicitly that the 14th amendment says nothing about "natural born citizens."

[DiogenesLamp]

so if some crazy nation has a consciption law that allows going 10 generations back it would disqualify someone?

Do you know of such a nation? Are you just trying to argumentative? There are nations that will grant automatic citizenship to the descendents of that Nation's citizens. Ireland, Italy, and Israel all have that policy, but I know of no nation which would actually try to compel an American to become one of their citizens.

Offering someone the opportunity to be one of their citizens is not at all the same thing as having a legitimate and recognized legal claim on their citizenship. Do you have any idea how many nations recognize citizenship through paternity?

Most of them.

I have read accounts of French Citizens who happened to be born on British Soil, being arrested and charged with Treason because they refused to fight in an English War against France. French Law made them French, while British Law made them British. This is the sort of loyalty problems that our founders wished to avoid in the Presidency.

[DiogenesLamp]

Maybe that will happen this month on an emergency basis.

We better hope it doesn't, for this Ignorant court will invariably rule in error. The Reason that for so many decades, the NRA didn't push a ruling on the Second Amendment being an Individual right was because the court could not be reliably counted on to get it right.

We are in the same situation with this. They have to be educated first, and we must provide the research to enlighten them.

[Seizethecarp]

Here is the quote followed by the citations by Judge Sullivan:

“Moreover, the Supreme Court has consistently held that the distinction between naturalborn citizens and naturalized citizens in the context of Presidential eligibility remains valid.

“See Schneider v. Rusk, 377 U.S. 163, 165 (1964) (“The only difference drawn by theConstitution is that only the ‘natural born’ citizen is eligibleto be President.”);

see also Knauer v. United States, 328 U.S.654, 658 (1946) (same);

Baumgartner v. United States, 322 U.S.665, 673-674 (1944) (same).”

Even Judge Sullivan doesn't think this case opens any new ground. The plainfiff was born in Guyana presumably to two non-US citizen parents, so the case is not on point with Barry's claimed US birth. Only a new case decided before Barry is inaugurated the second time (at the latest) can impact Barry.

[Mr Rogers]

Actually, the Supreme Court has said the 14th merely restates the definition of natural born citizen:

“The real object of the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution, in qualifying the words, “All persons born in the United States” by the addition “and subject to the jurisdiction thereof,” would appear to have been to exclude, by the fewest and fittest words (besides children of members of the Indian tribes, standing in a peculiar relation to the National Government, unknown to the common law), the two classes of cases — children born of alien enemies in hostile occupation and children of diplomatic representatives of a foreign State — both of which, as has already been shown, by the law of England and by our own law from the time of the first settlement of the English colonies in America, had been recognized exceptions to the fundamental rule of citizenship by birth within the country. Calvin’s Case, 7 Rep. 1, 18b; Cockburn on Nationality, 7; Dicey Conflict of Laws, 177; Inglis v. Sailors’ Snug Harbor, 3 Pet. 99, 155; 2 Kent Com. 39, 42.

The principles upon which each of those exceptions rests were long ago distinctly stated by this court. [p683] “

http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/historics/USSC_CR_0169_0649_ZO.html

There is not and has not been a requirement for two citizen parents for NBC status, even back in the 1840s:

“And the constitution itself contains a direct recognition of the subsisting common law principle, in the section which defines the qualification of the President. “No person except a natural born citizen, or a citizen of the United States at the time of the adoption of this constitution, shall be eligible to the office of President,” &c. The only standard which then existed, of a natural born citizen, was the rule of the common law, and no different standard has been adopted since. Suppose a person should be elected President who was native born, but of alien parents, could there be any reasonable doubt that he was eligible under the constitution? I think not.

(pg 250)
6. Upon principle, therefore, I can entertain no doubt, but that by the law of the United States, every person born within the dominions and allegiance of the United States, whatever were the situation of his parents, is a natural born citizen.”

http://tesibria.typepad.com/whats_your_evidence/Lynch_v_Clarke_1844_ocr.pdf

[allmendream]

Did man made law give women the right to vote, or did it recognize a right that had always existed under natural law?

Did man made law give people equal treatment under the law, or is equal treatment under the law a right that has always existed under natural law?

[DiogenesLamp]

Did man made law give women the right to vote, or did it recognize a right that had always existed under natural law?

I'm pretty sure it was a man made law called the 19th amendment. Not so sure it was a great idea either. It seems I read an article several months ago claiming that all the Democrat Presidents have been elected on the basis of Women's votes. Take out the Women's votes, and some of our Worst Presidents wouldn't have been elected.

Did man made law give people equal treatment under the law, or is equal treatment under the law a right that has always existed under natural law?

Not the way the founders practiced it. They obviously believed in equal treatment under the law for people whom they regarded as peers. Slaves and Indians are examples of people whom they did not regard as equals.

Not all agreed with this assessment. Dr. David Ramsey was believed to have lost his bid for the South Carolina Congress seat (to William Loughton Smith) because he was openly advocating the abolishment of Slavery. Not a very popular stand in Slave owning South Carolina.

You may argue that equality under the law is "natural law", but the founders wouldn't have agreed with you in the broadness of your definition as to whom it applied.