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.”
A rational person would try to protect as many lives as possible.
It is not rational to believe that a total ban on abortion could happen anytime soon.
YOU are PROABORTION since you refuse to take steps that would end millions of abortions.
YOU EV HAVE BLOOD ON YOUR HANDS, YOU ARE KILLING BABIES BY YOUR ARROGANT REFUSAL TO FACE REALITY!
Again, putting aside your grotesque personal attacks, I have to say that your Utilitarian arguments, while still not being moral or constitutional arguments, would have more weight to them if there was any evidence that you’re “saving some.”
But, on the contrary, all the evidence points to the fact that your continued sellout of the only decent moral, constitutional and legal arguments against abortion have for forty years accomplished nothing except to assure the continuation of abortion on demand.
Abortionist George Tiller's 2nd opinion “Doctor” Abortionist has been forced out of the abortion business due to laws restricting late term abortions and requiring such second opinions.
This has saved COUNTLESS lives.
You “no compromise” types opposed the laws that have put MANY abortionists out of business!
The POINT, the STRATEGY, is to lay legal “land mines” and “traps” whereby abortionists can be charged with crimes or whereby abortionists can be sued in Court.
The POINT is to make it unprofitable to be an abortionist.
That you oppose such a WORKABLE and OBJECTIVELY SUCCESSFUL strategy indicates that you, EV, are simply an attention seeking egomaniac who cares NOTHING about actually saving any lives at all.
Your personal attacks are so far over the line as to be laughable.
But, in any case, all they have to do is go up the road to the nearest mass murderer. I really don’t know why you find this so hard to understand.
Our unalienable rights are not supposed to be protected by travel inconvenience. They are required by the supreme law of our land to be equally protected by our laws.
But the incrementalists like yourself keep passing laws that grant “legal” permission to kill all the babies, as long as they are murdered according to your arbitrary schedule, and by your rules.
Which continues to assure the heinous practice of abortion on demand.
It’s really very simple.
There is a reason that nobody is following you.
You have no clue where you are going.
And you do? LOL...
Anyhow, I’m not looking for followers. You’re completely mistaken.
Bump
Ted is proving himself this evening/morning Ping!
Cruz is eligible to be President.
If you disagree you are an idiot.
If you think that Anyone has any authority over this decision, other than the States and the Congress, then YOU are anti-Constitution!
The Courts have NO power under our Constitution to rule on the eligibility of any candidate for President.
LOL
Go away.........
Everything I posted is TRUE!
You are a LIBERAL in so much as you think that the Courts should settle such matters in this Country.
The Courts have NO power, under the Constitution, over eligibility issues.
NONE!
Republicans need not worry about being embarrassed when Cruz debates Hillary or Biden. If I didn’t detest both of them so much, I could almost feel sorry for whichever commie loser gets that chore.
“If we allow the democrats and the GOP-e statists to select our next opposition candidate for us, ie, Chris Christie or Jeb Bush, this nation is kaput.”
AMEN and AMEN!
Cruz was champion debater at Harvard. It shows in interviews on TV & Radio.
If some one is not a naturalized citizen, he/she is a natural born citizen due to parental citizenship status. If one was born to an American mother during a safari in African, one is a natural born citizen.
So quit the in fighting and work on the big picture of getting behind a conservative who can win.
Get over yourself.
Are you seriously this pathological and so self possessed that you need to re-litigate a post from a month ago?
Yes, absolutely I will bend anyway possible to avoid a leftist democrat winning the WH in 2016. I am pragmatic. Not a head-strong and obstinate person full of ego.
IMHO only 3 GOP candidates have the intellectual capacity, charisma and ability to debate MSM on their feet. Cruz being one of them. So I am not going to tie myself in knots over his eligibility. If Obama was deemed eligible by the powers that be, I have zero problem with Cruz’s eligibility.
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