The concept of overlapping laws was a challenging idea for some of us in our first year of law school. What folks also don’t seem to realize here is once you open up the discussion to sources outside the constitutional text, vattel etc., you are not talking about binding authority anymore. Citizenship as a function of natural process and natural law does not depend on the authority of the laws or the scholars that try to describe it. By definition, it occurs naturally. Cruz would have been a citizen by inheritance from his mother, with or without a statutory framework. It’s really a no-brainier.
Peace,
SR
The courts of the past, as well as government officials, and so on, used a different no-brainer rule from the one you assert, at least they did before 1934.
Prior to May 24, 1934, U.S. citizen mothers were not permitted to transmit U.S. citizenship to their children born abroad. The Act of May 24, 1934 (the "1934 Statute") gave U.S. citizen mothers equality of status regarding their ability to transmit U.S. citizenship. However the provision was not applied retroactively. Therefore, children born before May 24, 1934 to a U.S. citizen mother and an alien father did not acquire U.S. citizenship.www.americanlaw.com/citabrd.html
I am not asserting this cite to be a source of law, merely as a contention that the rule you posit as being a natural no-brainer was not applied until a statute made it so.
From the other article by Farmer John posted here: according to United States v. Wong Kim Ark, 169 U.S. 649, 671 (1898) "'The acquisition . . . of nationality by descent is foreign to the principles of the common law, and is based wholly upon statutory enactments.'" (citing Dicey Conflict of Laws, 17, 741)
Agreed