“I don’t think the law would be that inflexible if it came down to it, no matter what argument can be made. The public and the courts would find them unreasonable.
You can run for president without worries !”
I would disagree with that. The founders were worried to the point of paranoia (sp?) about someone with any type of allegence or ties to a foriegn country. That’s why they put the “natural born citizen” requirement in. Natural born has never just meant “born on US soil”, and it’s easy to document that it never has.
You can tell from reading this article, other articles, and posts that most people are totally confused about this (including many legal scholars.) Anyone that quotes the 14th amendment immediatly shows they don’t understand the subject. The 14th amendment ONLY deals with citizenship, not the more specific “natural born citizen”.
The founders were afraid of direct vote by citizens, so the created the electorial college. Most people today think the electorial college is no longer needed, but I don’t see the supreme court getting rid of it anytime soon.
The public (today) might find the parental requirement unreasonable, but the people that wrote the Constitution didn’t. Like the electorial college, they had a legitimate concern at the time so they added it to the Constitution to address that concern.
I think the “camel nose under the tent” that gets this case heard is the fact that several states had the socialist candidate on the ballot (a guy born in Nigeria and not natural born by anyone’s definiton.) Once the case is in court, anything can happen. If they are going to rule on the socialist candidate’s status, then they will have to define what natural born means Constitutionally. I almost gurantee it won’t just be born on US soil.
The Socialist candidates case didn’t come up because he didn’t win. Based on the other cases, prior to winning nobody has “standing” to contest on the “natural born” grounds - which is a pretty silly idea to my mind. Perhaps one of the other candidates in the election would have had “standing” ?
But as for the law - effectively the law is what its current interpretation is, not what we think it is or would like it to be. It seems to me that the wording in the Constitution can be interpreted in a broad sense, given that there is very little precedent. The meaning would be whatever the current case establishes, if it comes to that.