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.
Since when is a Canadian birth certificate valid for conferring US citizenship?
Maybe in the North American Union. (Are we there yet? Vote for Ted!) /s
If Ann’s argument is based on British Common law. Then she should learn the meanings of Jus Sanguinas and Jus Soli. Cruz did not need to be Naturalized. Therefore he is a Natural Born Citizen. Like George Romney was.
But Ann! Those "birthers" were "nuts"! You yourself had nothing but disdain for them, that is until you yourself have become one.
Who's crazy now Ann?
I agree. The whole "born in Kenya" conspiracy has never made any sense if one actually thinks about it. Accepting this requires one to believe that in 1961, Obama's pregnant teenage mother made an expensive and arduous journey by herself (Obama Sr.'s summer attendance at Harvard is documented) to Kenya, a 3rd World country she'd never visited, to have a baby. Why?
There was a time when I realized that Trump would be the likely nominee that perhaps Trump would select Cruz for VP but now I can see that the position for Cruz would be The Supreme Court.
Coulter by the way is not an idiot. She is an attorney. If you have ever been a citizen of another country you cannot be a natural born citizen of this country. That is why Obama is ineligible, he was a citizen of Indonesia. He may have also been a citizen of Kenya and therefore a subject of the United Kingdom.
There is nobody that approaches the quality of Cruz in this election. Trump has certainly been on the right side of a lot of positions in this cycle but certainly not on the right side of others. In my opinion the most important consideration in this cycle is immigration, send them all home. At least on this Trump is not far from where I am. The difference is I would have a long waiting period for those who broke American law to be able to legally return. Coming here illegally is breaking American law.
She also overlooks that Lolo (Obama's step dad) adopted expatriated little Barry from some country (Kenya?) and naturalized him as a citizen of Jakarta. So even if Obama's slut mother was 21 and Barry left her womb into Hawaii he still might not be a citizen and if a citizen, one who was naturalized and not natural born.
The fact that his mother was enrolled in classes in Seattle on August 19, 1961 makes that a pretty difficult thing to believe.
How can you get on an Airplane with a two week old infant? Other freepers have found the flight policies of all the Airlines that served Hawaii in 1961 and they precluded a child so young from flying. The pressure changes could burst infant's eardrums, and so the airlines didn't allow it.
So how did he get to Seattle in August of 61?
The circumstantial evidence indicates Stanley Ann and little Barry were already in the area before he was born.
Ann, you’re a fraud. What Canadian law says, that’s THEIR deal. Ted was born to an American mom, so he is American. End of story.
Except for the FACT that everything she says is true...Right?
I’ll boil it down for you. We’re talking about a definition. All that matters is-
WHAT DID THE FRAMERS UNDERSTAND THE MEANING OF NATURAL BORN TO BE?
Nothing the courts have said, and nothing the legislature has done, can alter the meaning of ONE WORD in the Constitution.
Be born of the land, of citizen parents, and your citizenship requires no statute or decree because it is NATURAL.
I argued this about Obama for years. It doesn’t matter where he was born, his father was Kenyan. Therefore he, Cruz, and Rubio are NOT natural born.
She’s not crazy. She’s a duplicitous puke.
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You miss the point, the only reason his mother was old enough is that congress passed a law that said she was old enough. If you are a citizen at birth because of a law then you are not natural born.
The difference is that natural born citizens are citizens at birth without the contrivance of congress. Without the law that congress passes saying who could be a citizen and who could not Cruz would not be a citizen, much less a natural born citizen.
Natural born does not mean citizen at birth and you know it.
The problem is if someone is going to be an originalist then they need to be one. So how easy it is for some to find prenumbras?
People are clearly UNABLE to understand SIMPLE law. ALL THAT MATTERS IS WHAT DID THE FRAMERS THINK NATURAL BORN MEANT AT THE TIME OF THE ADOPTION OF THE CONSTITUTION?
Nothing else matters. Congress cannot ever change the meanings of words in the Constitution.
This is not hard to understand, yet many here simply cannot grasp the simplicity of this basic legal notion.
Sad.
And unfortunately for you she is not only right on this issue, she is right because she has perfect grasp of this issue.
Sorry.
But where is his Consular Report of Birth Abroad?
Cruz would be the best candidate on the Constitution so he has my vote. Those constantly hammering of this NBC issue out of 'respect for the Constitution' apparently have to destroy the Constitution in order to save it.
Look at the Canadian statute that I posted in post #1. It clearly states that a Natural Born Canadian Citizen is someone that is born in Canada or on a Canadian ship. It doesn’t say anything about thing about being “someone who is a citizen at birth”. Canadian law is based on the same common law principles that US law is based on. A NBC is someone born in the country. period. Ted Cruz is a NBC of Canada, not the USA. By staying in this race, he is a walking talking affront to the constitution and I lose more and more respect for every day that he allows this charade to persist.
-PJ
You can be an American but not NBC. Still, where is his Consular Report of Birth Abroad showing his mother claimed hours American citizenship?
Sounds like Ann is finally reading FR eligibility discussions.
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