Posted on 01/20/2016 6:57:04 AM PST by RC one
If Ted Cruz is a “natural-born citizen,†eligible to be president, what was all the fuss about Obama being born in Kenya? No one disputed that Obama’s mother was a U.S. citizen.
Cruz was born in Canada to an American citizen mother and an alien father. If he’s eligible to be president, then so was Obama — even if he’d been born in Kenya.
As with most constitutional arguments, whether or not Cruz is a “natural-born citizen†under the Constitution apparently comes down to whether you support Cruz for president. (Or, for liberals, whether you think U.S. citizenship is a worthless thing that ought to be extended to every person on the planet.)
Forgetting how corrupt constitutional analysis had become, I briefly believed lawyers who assured me that Cruz was a “natural-born citizen,†eligible to run for president, and “corrected†myself in a single tweet three years ago. That tweet’s made quite a stir!
But the Constitution is the Constitution, and Cruz is not a “natural-born citizen.†(Never let the kids at Kinko’s do your legal research.)
I said so long before Trump declared for president, back when Cruz was still my guy — as lovingly captured on tape last April by the Obama birthers (www.birtherreport.com/2015/04/shocker-anti-birther-ann-coulter-goes.html).
The Constitution says: “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.â€
The phrase “natural born†is a legal term of art that goes back to Calvin’s Case, in the British Court of Common Pleas, reported in 1608 by Lord Coke. The question before the court was whether Calvin — a Scot — could own land in England, a right permitted only to English subjects.
The court ruled that because Calvin was born after the king of Scotland had added England to his realm, Calvin was born to the king of both realms and had all the rights of an Englishman.
It was the king on whose soil he was born and to whom he owed his allegiance — not his Scottish blood — that determined his rights.
Not everyone born on the king’s soil would be “natural born.†Calvin’s Case expressly notes that the children of aliens who were not obedient to the king could never be “natural†subjects, despite being “born upon his soil.†(Sorry, anchor babies.) However, they still qualified for food stamps, Section 8 housing and Medicaid.
Relying on English common law for the meaning of “natural born,†the U.S. Supreme Court has repeatedly held that “the acquisition of citizenship by being born abroad of American parents†was left to Congress “in the exercise of the power conferred by the Constitution to establish an uniform rule of naturalization.†(U.S. v. Wong Kim Ark (1898); Rogers v. Bellei (1971); Zivotofsky v. Kerry (2015), Justice Thomas, concurring.)
A child born to American parents outside of U.S. territory may be a citizen the moment he is born — but only by “naturalization,†i.e., by laws passed by Congress. If Congress has to write a law to make you a citizen, you’re not “natural born.â€
Because Cruz’s citizenship comes from the law, not the Constitution, as late as 1934, he would not have had “any conceivable claim to United States citizenship. For more than a century and a half, no statute was of assistance. Maternal citizenship afforded no benefit†— as the Supreme Court put it in Rogers v. Bellei (1971).
That would make no sense if Cruz were a “natural-born citizen†under the Constitution. But as the Bellei Court said: “Persons not born in the United States acquire citizenship by birth only as provided by Acts of Congress.†(There’s an exception for the children of ambassadors, but Cruz wasn’t that.)
So Cruz was born a citizen — under our naturalization laws — but is not a “natural-born citizen†— under our Constitution.
I keep reading the arguments in favor of Cruz being a “natural-born citizen,†but don’t see any history, any Blackstone Commentaries, any common law or Supreme Court cases.
One frequently cited article in the Harvard Law Review cites the fact that the “U.S. Senate unanimously agreed that Senator McCain was eligible for the presidency.†Sen. McCain probably was natural born — but only because he was born on a U.S. military base to a four-star admiral in the U.S. Navy, and thus is analogous to the ambassador’s child described in Calvin’s Case. (Sorry, McCain haters — oh wait! That’s me!) But a Senate resolution — even one passed “unanimously“! — is utterly irrelevant. As Justice Antonin Scalia has said, the court’s job is to ascertain “objective law,†not determine “some kind of social consensus,†which I believe is the job of the judges on “American Idol.†(On the other hand, if Congress has the power to define constitutional terms, how about a resolution declaring that The New York Times is not “speech“?)
Mostly, the Cruz partisans confuse being born a citizen with being a “natural born citizen.†This is constitutional illiteracy. “Natural born†is a legal term of art. A retired judge who plays a lot of tennis is an active judge, but not an “active judge†in legal terminology. The best argument for Cruz being a natural born citizen is that in 1790, the first Congress passed a law that provided: “The children of citizens of the United States, that may be born beyond sea, or out of the limits of the United States, shall be considered as natural born citizens.†Except the problem is, neither that Congress, nor any Congress for the next 200 years or so, actually treated them like natural born citizens.
As the Supreme Court said in Bellei, a case about the citizenship of a man born in Italy to a native-born American mother and an Italian father: “It is evident that Congress felt itself possessed of the power to grant citizenship to the foreign born and at the same time to impose qualifications and conditions for that citizenship.†The most plausible interpretation of the 1790 statute is that Congress was saying the rights of naturalized citizens born abroad are the same as the rights of the natural born — except the part about not being natural born.
Does that sound odd? It happens to be exactly what the Supreme Court said in Schneider v. Rusk (1964): “We start from the premise that the rights of citizenship of the native born and of the naturalized person are of the same dignity, and are coextensive. The only difference drawn by the Constitution is that only the ’natural born’ citizen is eligible to be president. (Article II, Section 1)“
Unless we’re all Ruth Bader Ginsburg now, and interpret the Constitution to mean whatever we want it to mean, Cruz is not a “natural born citizen.†Take it like a man, Ted — and maybe President Trump will make you attorney general.
Ted Cruz’s mother may have been a US citizen by birth but she took Canadian citizenship before his birth.
I don’t see how a Canadian, even a previous US citizen, can give birth to a US citizen in Canada. She took on Canadian citizenship before he was born.
Anchor babies are NOT citizens. This is the OPPOSITE of what happened in the Cruz case.
It is YOU people who choose to be obstinate and childish. It is not up to Ted to provide Consulate appears that his mom may not have ever gotten. In the absence of citizenship renunciation, Ted is American.
You guys are parsing clauses like leftists. Most of you, not all, it’s all b/c you support the Rotten donor and pal Trump.
It is inexplicable to me that Ted Cruz wandered around Texas for years needing a birth certificate and all he had to show was his Canadian Birth certificate?
How has he been able to vote in any US Elections? Drivers license? Where are those documents? I bet the Democrats have them.
Huh? What a weird comment.
A CRBA is a very common and normal document and very easy to show. Strange that you would get so upset about it. Very odd indeed.
It is inexplicable to me that Ted Cruz wandered around Texas for years needing a birth certificate and all he had to show was his Canadian Birth certificate?
How has he been able to vote in any US Elections? Drivers license? Where are those documents? I bet the Democrats have them.
I wonder the same thing.
- Did he register with the Selective Service?
- Did he enroll at Harvard as a foreign student?
- When did he obtain a US passport?
I don’t think the dems have them..if they did, they would blow the lid off this sham.
I also don’t think he has them. I know they say that he has a CRBA, if so, produce it, or step aside.
Strange that you would want to disqualify our best candidate over a possible omission by his mom. Really strange and suspect.
Common sense makes this issue unassailable. True.
It is not as ludicrous position as you postulate. The wisdom of the founding fathers is that the ultimate redress for any grievous overstep of or by Congress, lies with the People. As Congress represents the People, if such and overstep occurs, it can be corrected by correcting Congress during the next election.
The same Article I Section 8 (even same sentence) empowers Congress to set a uniform rule of bankruptcies. In similar hyperbolic case, Congress could enable any business throughout the world to file for bankruptcy in US Courts. There would be many dire consequences to such a move that dont need to be discussed here for the purposes of this argument. None the less, the authority is clearly articulated at the feet of Congress.
I am of the opinion that while Congress is authorized by the Constitution, the restraint exercised is done so for either fear of being removed from their position by the People or those representatives that are honestly holding to principles. I would point out that in one overstep, Congress removed jus soli as a means of justification for citizenship. The 14th amendment restored that justification for US citizenship and made it difficult for future sessions of Congress to remove that justification. It was the People through the later actions of Congress via the 14th amendment, that corrected that overstep.
I am also of the opinion that should a Congress pass an Act that authorizes the whole world as NBC, the People would rise up, throw the bums out, and like the 14th amendment, correct the actions of Congress either via subsequent Acts and possibly via another amendment.
So his mom doesn’t apply to have him registered properly as a citizen and we should overlook it because he’s the best guy we’ve got?
Do you have any idea what you are saying and how it sounds? The end justifies the means. Just show the silly paper.
You are certainly entitled to your opinions, and your mistakes, and so on. But don't expect the rest of us to jump on the ship of "Let's Subvert the US Constitution."
If the Dems have these documents they will wait for a moment that matters like after Cruz s the nominee OR if he is nominated for the Supteme Court.
LOL. You can't describe that "Congressional overstep" with any particularity, because none exists.
Art IV Sec. 2 makes citizens of a state, citizens of the US. Some states refused to grant citizenship to the children of slaves. That is what the 14th amendment cures. Not some Congressional overstep.
Anyway, we should cease this dialog, because continuing it will only lead to hard feelings. I have no hard feelings toward a person who reaches the wrong conclusion on want of understanding. That's innocent, common, and shows no effort to deceive.
Levin, OTOH, get out of here. He's like Baghdad Bob on this issue.
LOL, I find your assumption that I have not read the law, in general very amusing.
The fact is that I read quite a bit of law as part of my job. Granted most of what I read is international law and treaties that govern financial institutions, security and international standards and is not related directly to citizenship ... other than when I have to submit my paperwork for work permits.
But I can tell from how you describe "how the law works," that you do not understand beyond rote application.
I do not mean for that to be an insult, it is not. Sometimes rote application is tricky.
Heck, citizenship law can be done by rote. The problem is that people don't know the rules in the first place, and second, they don't like the result they get when the rules are applied, so they revert to magic thinking.
Thank you. That case is quite helpful, if not fully dispositive.
Looks like settled law to me.
I get to the same place, just using the US constitution (no resort to Vattel, British common law, etc.).
Look at paragraph 5b.
OK, I misunderstood. I thought you were using it to support eligibility, which is why I said it wasn’t dispositive.
At this point, I have significant questions about his eligibility, and am looking for something that sets my mind at ease. So far I haven’t seen it. And so far, you’ve supplied the most useful material.
That's funny. No sweat. It's funny to me because I have posted for days, many lengthy arguments, that Cruz is naturalized and therefore not NBC. I'm convinced, no doubt in my mind.
-- I have significant questions about his eligibility, and am looking for something that sets my mind at ease. --
I'm quite interested in any authority (case law only) that can reasonably be taken as Cruz was NOT naturalized. I've only looked at about 50 cases, but who knows, maybe I'm missing the obvious.
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