Posted on 08/30/2013 12:02:15 PM PDT by Jim Robinson
By Ilya Shapiro, Senior Fellow In Constitutional Sudies and Editor-In-Chief, Cato Supreme Court Review
As we head into a potential government shutdown over the funding of Obamacare, the iconoclastic junior senator from Texas — love him or hate him — continues to stride across the national stage. With his presidential aspirations as big as everything in his home state, by now many know what has never been a secret: Ted Cruz was born in Canada.
(Full disclosure: I’m Canadian myself, with a green card. Also, Cruz has been a friend since his days representing Texas before the Supreme Court.)
But does that mean that Cruz’s presidential ambitions are gummed up with maple syrup or stuck in snowdrifts altogether different from those plaguing the Iowa caucuses? Are the birthers now hoist on their own petards, having been unable to find any proof that President Obama was born outside the United States but forcing their comrade-in-boots to disqualify himself by releasing his Alberta birth certificate?
No, actually, and it’s not even that complicated; you just have to look up the right law. It boils down to whether Cruz is a “natural born citizen” of the United States, the only class of people constitutionally eligible for the presidency. (The Founding Fathers didn’t want their newly independent nation to be taken over by foreigners on the sly.)
What’s a “natural born citizen”? The Constitution doesn’t say, but the Framers’ understanding, combined with statutes enacted by the First Congress, indicate that the phrase means both birth abroad to American parents — in a manner regulated by federal law — and birth within the nation’s territory regardless of parental citizenship. The Supreme Court has confirmed that definition on multiple occasions in various contexts.
There’s no ideological debate here: Harvard law professor Laurence Tribe and former solicitor general Ted Olson — who were on opposite sides in Bush v. Gore among other cases — co-authored a memorandum in March 2008 detailing the above legal explanation in the context of John McCain’s eligibility. Recall that McCain — lately one of Cruz’s chief antagonists — was born to U.S. citizen parents serving on a military base in the Panama Canal Zone.
In other words, anyone who is a citizen at birth — as opposed to someone who becomes a citizen later (“naturalizes”) or who isn’t a citizen at all — can be president.
So the one remaining question is whether Ted Cruz was a citizen at birth. That’s an easy one. The Nationality Act of 1940 outlines which children become “nationals and citizens of the United States at birth.” In addition to those who are born in the United States or born outside the country to parents who were both citizens — or, interestingly, found in the United States without parents and no proof of birth elsewhere — citizenship goes to babies born to one American parent who has spent a certain number of years here.
That single-parent requirement has been amended several times, but under the law in effect between 1952 and 1986 — Cruz was born in 1970 — someone must have a citizen parent who resided in the United States for at least 10 years, including five after the age of 14, in order to be considered a natural-born citizen. Cruz’s mother, Eleanor Darragh, was born in Delaware, lived most of her life in the United States, and gave birth to little Rafael Edward Cruz in her 30s. Q.E.D.
So why all the brouhaha about where Obama was born, given that there’s no dispute that his mother, Ann Dunham, was a citizen? Because his mother was 18 when she gave birth to the future president in 1961 and so couldn’t have met the 5-year-post-age-14 residency requirement. Had Obama been born a year later, it wouldn’t have mattered whether that birth took place in Hawaii, Kenya, Indonesia, or anywhere else. (For those born since 1986, by the way, the single citizen parent must have only resided here for five years, at least two of which must be after the age of 14.)
In short, it may be politically advantageous for Ted Cruz to renounce his Canadian citizenship before making a run at the White House, but his eligibility for that office shouldn’t be in doubt. As Tribe and Olson said about McCain — and could’ve said about Obama, or the Mexico-born George Romney, or the Arizona-territory-born Barry Goldwater — Cruz “is certainly not the hypothetical ‘foreigner’ who John Jay and George Washington were concerned might usurp the role of Commander in Chief.”
In addition, no Act or law that has passed has amended the Article ll eligibility requirement. Even Barney Frank never suggested such a thing in each of the attempts he made/backed trying to amend the nbc clause out of our Constitution.
"Soon after the first call for militia it was considered a duty to authorize the commanding general in proper cases according to his discretion, to suspend the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus, or in other words to arrest and detain, without resort to the ordinary processes and forms of law, such individuals as he might deem dangerous to the public safety. This authority has purposely been exercised but very sparingly. Nevertheless the legality and propriety of what has been done under it are questioned and the attention of the country has been called to the proposition that one who is sworn to 'take care that the laws be faithfully executed' should not himself violate them. Of course some consideration was given to the questions of power and propriety before this matter was acted upon. The whole of the laws which were required to be faithfully executed were being resisted and failing of execution in nearly one-third of the States. Must they be allowed to finally fail of execution, even had it been perfectly clear that by the use of the means necessary to their execution some single law, made in such extreme tenderness of the citizen's liberty that practically it relieves more of the guilty than of the innocent, should to a very limited extent be violated? To state the question more directly, are all the laws but one to go unexecuted and the Government itself go to pieces lest that one be violated? Even in such a case would not the official oath be broken if the Government should be overthrown, when it was believed that disregarding the single law would tend to preserve it? But it was not believed that this question was presented. It was not believed that any law was violated"
Please note that at the end of that paragraph, Lincoln states his belief that no law was in fact violated. However, as DiogeneLamp has indicated, he clearly raised and discussed the notion that it might occasionally be necessary to sacrifice compliance with a single law to protect the greater body of laws of which the single law is but a part.
Ow! That hurts.
I’ll take another look if and when they get it to the SCOTUS and win.
.
BLACKMUN, J., Opinion of the Court
SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES
410 U.S. 113
Roe v. Wade
APPEAL FROM THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE NORTHERN DISTRICT OF TEXAS
No. 70-18 Argued: December 13, 1971 --- Decided: January 22, 1973
Jane Roe (Norma McCorvey) Won this case. I do not believe that winning a case before the Supreme court necessarily makes someone correct. Especially the modern courts.
This case is one of the most blatant examples of a wrongly decided case. It's so bad, many Liberal lawyers won't even try to defend it's conclusions.
Among the other Terrible Supreme court decisions are Wickard v Fillburn (A Farmer can't grow wheat for his own cows.) Kelo v New London (A city can seize someone's property and give it to someone else) Lawrence v Texas (Sodomy is a protected right) and of course the Latest ruling on Obamacare. (It's a tax, and therefore legal)
At this point, i'm not seeing how amateurs could do a worse job.
That would be the opinion that WKA reversed, since that OPINION was in the DISSENT.
What kind of support are you looking for? In point of fact, the "Two Parent" theory is a derivative of the US Application of the legal concept of "Coverture." Women automatically acquired their Husband's citizenship on marriage, so the "two parent" thing is an artifact of the fact that the Male's citizenship determined the couple's citizenship.
At least it did until 1922. (Later reinforced by the Citizenship act of 1934.)
The Cable act created a condition which never existed before. Parent's of differing citizenships. I'm pretty sure that congress wasn't trying to tamper with the meaning of "natural born citizen" but that has been the effect of this legislation.
There are only two types of Amercan citizens, not three: (1) Citizens of the United States at Birth (which is the same as native born or natural born); and (2) Naturalized United States Citizens (cannot be President or Vice President).
Barack Hussein Obama, II had one U.S. citizen parent who was born in Wichita, Kansas and one non-citizen parent born in Kogelo, Kenya.
Here are four federal court rulings regarding Obama’s natural born citizen status plus six state court rulings which challenged Obama’s eligibility to be on a state’s ballot or to collect the votes of electors in a state:
Rhodes v. MacDonald, U.S. District Court Judge Clay D. Land: “A spurious claim questioning the president’s constitutional legitimacy may be protected by the First Amendment, but a Court’s placement of its imprimatur upon a claim that is so lacking in factual support that it is frivolous would undoubtedly disserve the public interest.”—U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Georgia, September 16, 2009.
http://www.scribd.com/doc/19809978/RHODES-v-MacDONALD-13-ORDER-denying-3-Motion-for-TRO-granting-8-Motion-to-Dismiss-Ordered-by-Judge-Clay-D-Land-on-09162009-CGC-Entered-0
Barnett v. Obama, U.S. District Court Judge David O. Carter: “There may very well be a legitimate role for the judiciary to interpret whether the natural born citizen requirement has been satisfied in the case of a presidential candidate who has not already won the election and taken office. However, on the day that President Obama took the presidential oath and was sworn in, he became President of the United States. Any removal of him from the presidency must be accomplished through the Constitution’s mechanisms for the removal of a President, either through impeachment or the succession process set forth in the Twenty-Fifth Amendment. Plaintiffs attempt to subvert this grant of power to Congress by convincing the Court that it should disregard the constitutional procedures in place for the removal of a sitting president. The process for removal of a sitting president—removal for any reason—is within the province of Congress, not the courts.”—U.S. District Court for the Central District of California, October 29, 2009
http://ia600204.us.archive.org/1/items/gov.uscourts.cacd.435591/gov.uscourts.cacd.435591.89.0.pdf
Ankeny v. Daniels, Indiana. A three judge panel of the Indiana Court of Appeals ruled unanimously: “Based on the language of Article II, Section 1, Clause 4 and the guidance provided by Wong Kim Ark, we conclude that persons born within the United States are ‘natural born citizens’ for Article II, Section 1 purposes, regardless of the citizenship of their parents.”—Indiana Court of Appeals, November 12, 2009
http://www.in.gov/judiciary/opinions/pdf/11120903.ebb.pdf
Taitz v. Obama (Quo Warranto) “This is one of several such suits filed by Ms. Taitz in her quixotic attempt to prove that President Obama is not a natural born citizen, as is required by the Constitution. This Court is not willing to go tilting at windmills with her.”— Chief U.S. District Court Judge Royce C. Lamberth, U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, April 14, 2010
http://www.scribd.com/doc/30040084/TAITZ-v-OBAMA-QW-23-MEMORANDUM-OPINION-dcd-04502943496-23-0
Tisdale v. Obama, U.S. District Court Judge John A. Gibney, Jr.: “It is well settled that those born within the United States are natural born citizens.”— Tisdale v Obama, U.S. District Court of the Eastern District of Virginia, January 23, 2012.
http://www.scribd.com/doc/82011399/Tisdale-v-Obama-EDVA-3-12-cv-00036-Doc-2-ORDER-23-Jan-2012
Swensson, Powell, Farrar and Welden v. Obama, Administrative Law Judge Michael Mahili, State of Georgia Administrative Hearings,: “For the purposes of this analysis, the Court considered that Barack Obama was born in the United States. Therefore, as discussed in Ankeny, he became a citizen at birth and is a natural born citizen. Accordingly, President Barack Obama is eligible as a candidate for the presidential primary under O.C.G.A. under Section 21-2-5(b). February 3, 2012
http://www.scribd.com/doc/80424508/Swensson-Powell-Farrar-Welden-vs-Obama-Judge-Michael-Malihi-s-Final-Order-Georgia-Ballot-Access-Challenge-2-3-12
Allen v. Obama, Arizona Superior Court Judge Richard E. Gordon: “Arizona courts are bound by United States Supreme Court precedent in construing the United States Constitution, and this precedent fully supports that President Obama is a natural born citizen under the Constitution and thus qualified to hold the office of President. Contrary to Plaintiff’s assertion, Minor v. Happersett, 88 U.S. 162 (1874), does not hold otherwise.”—Pima County Superior Court, Tuscon, Arizona, March 7, 2012
http://www.scribd.com/doc/84531299/AZ-2012-03-07-Allen-v-Obama-C20121317-ORDER-Dismissing-Complaint
Purpura & Moran v Obama: New Jersey Administrative Law Judge Jeff S. Masin: “No court, federal, state or administrative, has accepted the challengers’ position that Mr. Obama is not a “natural born Citizen” due to the acknowledged fact that his father was born in Kenya and was a British citizen by virtue of the then applicable British Nationality Act. Nor has the fact that Obama had, or may have had, dual citizenship at the time of his birth and thereafter been held to deny him the status of natural born. It is unnecessary to reinvent the wheel here. … The petitioners’ legal position on this issue, however well intentioned, has no merit in law. Thus, accepting for the point of this issue that Mr. Obama was born in Hawaii, he is a ‘natural born Citizen’ regardless of the status of his father.” April 10, 2012
http://www.scribd.com/doc/88936737/2012-04-10-NJ-Purpura-Moran-v-Obama-Initial-Decision-of-ALJ-Masin-Apuzzo
Voeltz v. Obama (Original Jurisdiction), Judge Terry P. Lewis, Leon County, Florida Circuit Court Judge: “However, the United States Supreme Court has concluded that ‘[e]very person born in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, becomes at once a citizen of the United States. ‘Other courts that have considered the issue in the context of challenges to the qualifications of candidates for the office of President of the United States have come to the same conclusion.”—June 29, 2012
http://www.scribd.com/doc/99025994/FL-2012-06-29-Voeltz-v-Obama-order-dismissing-amended-complaint
Voeltz v. Obama (Request for Reconsideration), Judge John C. Cooper, Leon County, Florida Circuit Court Judge: “In addition, to the extent that the complaint alleges that President Obama is not a “natural born citizen” even though born in the United States, the Court is in agreement with other courts that have considered this issue, namely, that persons born within the borders of the United States are “natural born citizens” for Article II, Section 1 purpose, regardless of the citizenship of their parents.”—September 6, 2012
http://judicial.clerk.leon.fl.us/image_orders.asp?caseid=77182640&jiscaseid=&defseq=&chargeseq=&dktid=57485906&dktsource=CRTV
Can you provide a court ruling which says that Barack Obama’s lack of two U.S. citizen parents renders him ineligible? I’ll accept a ruling from any level of the judiciary.
As far as the wisdom of the Founding Fathers goes, I concur with the wisdom of the Founding Father who was dubbed “The Father of the Constitution,” James Madison: “It is an established maxim, that birth is a criterion of allegiance. Birth, however, derives its force sometimes from place, and sometimes from parentage; but, in general place is the most certain criterion; it is what applies in the United States, it will therefore be unnecessary to investigate any other.”—Abridgment of the Debates of Congress, from 1789 to 1856 From Gales and Seatons’ Annals of Congress; from Their Register of Debates; and from the Official Reported Debates of United States. Congress by Thomas Hart Benton.
I agree with you that times change and meanings change. If your side can find any judicial opinion or any congressional action to support separating native born from natural born here in 2013, I’ll be impressed. Until then, not so much.
Bottom line:
If Ted Cruz decides to run and IF he’s the strongest conservative running, this website is going to support him 100%!!
The tea party movement is the best thing we have going for us and the Reaganite Ted Cruz is a natural conservative and tea party leader. He’s an articulate, accomplished, proven constitutional scholar/lawyer. He’s a natural born American patriot in every sense of the word and a determined fighter for our Liberty and our God-given rights!
Anyone who says otherwise is woefully ignorant or simply FOS!!
As far as I’m concerned, he fits the bill of natural born citizen and is fully qualified to run for the presidency.
Please bear with me and please try to understand what I’m saying here. Read between the lines if you have to.
Rebellion is ON!!
My website (FR) will not be used in an attempt to torpedo our very best conservative fighters and candidates!! We will not allow a repeat of the McCain/Romney fiasco!!
Damn the torpedos, damn the naysayers, full steam ahead!!
This is REBELLION (tea party voter rebellion)!! Join or perish!!
We FIGHT and we fight NOW for our very right to exist as a free nation!!
No buts. No crying.
Get used to it.
It might be added that if the members of our Supreme Court thought that Obama was ineligible, they might not have attended both of his inaugural ceremonies. And, the Chief Justice might not have volunteered twice to administer the oath to Obama.
It's up to the voters and their electors. And, I am extremely confident that they will rule that Cruz was born a citizen and is thus a natural born citizen.
All else is baloney!
Ted Cruz - 2016
Essentially he wasn’t pretending that what he was doing was Constitutional. He was admitting openly that it was unConstitutional.
That's the way I see it.
It’s a wonder anything functioned during those years.
And things really haven't function properly ever since. Lincoln created the first Federal Juggernaut, and Massive government has been with us ever since. Teddy Roosevelt Expanded it. Wilson expanded it again, and FDR expanded it further, and then Johnson turned it into a cancer.
Keep up the good work for the other side, but I sure wish you would do it somewhere else. We’re in the middle of a rebellion here.
Very few people are going to read your spam.
Bottom line, are you with us or against us?
Friendly Correction! The Chief Justice administered the Oath of Office FOUR times to our current “oaf in office.”
:-)
It is my opinion that some people, who after having lived through tyrannical governments, come to the United States and now love it more than the people who were born here.
This is one reason why I say Ted Cruz complies with the intent and spirit of the law whether he complies with the technical letter of the law or not.
At this point I don't care. He's exactly the kind of man we need, and I will support him if he runs.
The point is, as you have shown time and again, Ted Cruz is a NBC. By November, few will doubt that and those few will be folks who would never vote for a conservative no matter where he was born.
Ted Cruz - 2016
The point is that I don’t believe that there is any court in America that won’t use the law of the land as codified in 8 U.S.C. § 1401 as the guide for Senator Cruz’s eligibility, just as they did for Obama and 8 U.S.C. § 1401 fully supports Senator Cruz’s eligibility as a Citizen of the United State at Birth.
As I already said, I want Sarah Palin and Senator Cruz on the ticket for 2016.
Exactly.
We have no comprehension creds.
Even when multiple Congresspersons agree on at least one thing, and state it over and over in front of the appropriate committees - that to be Constitutionally eligible one has to be born on U.S. soil, folks here and elsewhere who are huge fans of Cruz ignore that willingly.
Just as it’s ignored by some “birthers” that if Stanley Ann lied about the baby daddy being Sr., and wasn’t “really” married to him (his being a bigamist may/would have nullified any marriage like that here in the US)then obama Jr. would indeed be a nbc. So what if Davis or one of those other men fathered Jr. - he would simply be a nbc, albeit an illegitimate infant.
Notice that I am NOT adding any personal opinions or emotional spin on that nbc topic at all?
It’s because I can appreciate that my opinion - the strictest possible meaning of the nbc clause, may not turn out to be something I find definitive period correct proof of. Well, what I’d consider would answer the question for ME with absolutely no interpretation possible by anyone anywhere! !!! :)
But I HAVE found definitive proof that our most elite, elected lawmakers concur that to be nbc one must at least have been born in the U.S. They want to do away with that requirement so badly that they have tried over and over to get an amendment passed. Again that is a fact of very recent history and NOT my opinion. No emotion involved.
Ok, great! Thanks. There’s so much crap flying around I sometimes get confused as to who’s arguing for us and who’s firing torpedoes at our own.
I’m looking for people who are interested in fighting for our freedom. Cruz is definitely one of us. I like him. And I like Sarah. A lot! Hope one or the other runs. If they both want to run, hope they agree to make it a ticket (though that’s probably never done).
Yup....you're right. It's almost that!
About thirty years after the ratification of the Constitution.... the U.S. Supreme Court quotes "The Law of Nations" in their decision; The Venus (1814). Here is what Chief Justice Livingston had to say:
"Vattel, who, though not very full to this point, is more explicit and more satisfactory on it than any other whose work has fallen into my hands, says":
“The citizens are the members of the civil society; bound to this society by certain duties, and subject to its authority, they equally participate in its advantages. The natives or indigenes are those born in the country of parents who are citizens. Society not being able to subsist and to perpetuate itself but by the children of the citizens, those children naturally follow the condition of their fathers, and succeed to all their rights.
It would sound to me that the Supreme Court, 75 years after the publication of the "Law of Nations" was still holding to Vattel's original meaning....that the "Naturel Indigenes" (Natural Born) are those whose parents are citizens.
Most of the members of this court....themselves took part in the American Revolution....or had fathers that did. Livingston himself....was a Lt. Colonel in the Army and an aide-de-camp to General Arnold before he defected. They totally knew what the framers meant by the words.....Natural Born Citizen.
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