False conclusion on your part. The Constitution is vague and unclear on this entire NBC requirement. Unless and until Cruz/Rubio/Obama/whoever is declared ineligible by the (Supreme) Court, then they are Constitutionally eligible.
See tagline.
Look, we keep hearing that the “Constitution is vague and unclear” on what an NBC is, but it’s time to accept that that argument is nothing but a cop out.
In all actually, pretty much the entirety of English common law, our Founders, and all our constitutional experts all the way up to the beginning of the 20th century agree practically uniformly that natural born citizenship descends through place of birth (jus soli), with parentage being of much less importance, if they even granted it any at all.
The only - ONLY - reason that this issue is “cloudy” is because of people who purposefully obfuscate it with partial evidence and unhistorical arguments in favour of their favourite politicians, whether Cruz, Obama, or some other. It’s all fluff and nonsense. Someone born on US soil is an NBC, someone not born on US soil is not.
I will repost something I posted the other day on this:
The problem with folks who try to rely on Vattel’s NBC definition drawn from natural law is that Vattel went on to state that each nation typically enacts some form of positive law (which can, in context, refer to common law, since it is basically just made up of accumulated jurisprudence) which more or less overrules the natural law interpretation.
Most people don’t know that.
However, jurists who actually relied upon common law pretty clearly state that natural born citizenship descends from place of birth. For instance, Blackstone unambiguously defined a NBC as “such as are born within the dominions of the crown of England,” while “those who are born out of it” are aliens.
James Madison wrote in a letter dated May 22, 1789,
“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.”
So first of all, you want the Founders’ intent - THAT is a pretty good indicator of it, since Madison was a major author and propagandist for the new Constitution, and presumably knew what it’s provisions meant to those who wrote them.
Zephaniah Swift, in his 1810 work A System of the Laws of the State of Connecticut wrote,
““It is an established maxim, received by all political writers, that every person owes a natural allegiance to the government of that country in which he is born. Allegiance is defined to be a tie, that binds the subject to the state, and in consequence of his obedience, he is entitled to protection...
“The children of aliens, born in this state, are considered as natural born subjects, and have the same rights with the rest of the citizens.â€Â
St. George Tucker wrote in 1803 in his commentary on Blackstone,
“That provision in the constitution which requires that the president shall be a native-born citizen (unless he were a citizen of the United States when the constitution was adopted,) is a happy means of security against foreign influence...
“A very respectable political writer makes the following pertinent remarks upon this subject. ‘Prior to the adoption of the constitution, the people inhabiting the different states might be divided into two classes: natural born citizens, or those born within the state, and aliens, or such as were born out of it.’”
In his Commentaries on American Law, James Kent, the “father of American Jurisprudence,” defined a native-born citizen (which was used by pretty much all writers synonymously with “natural born citizen”) as,
“Natives are all persons born within the jurisdiction and allegiance of the United States.”
In William Rawles’ 1829 work A View of the Constitution, he wrote,
“Therefore every person born within the United States, its territories or districts, whether the parents are citizens or aliens, is a natural born citizen in the sense of the Constitution, and entitled to all the rights and privileges appertaining to that capacity...Under our Constitution the question is settled by its express language, and when we are informed that, excepting those who were citizens, (however the capacity was acquired,) at the time the Constitution was adopted, no person is eligible to the office of president unless he is a natural born citizen, the principle that the place of birth creates the relative quality is established as to us.”
Supreme Court Justice Joseph Story, in 1840 wrote in his A Familiar Exposition of the Constitution of the United States using the same definition of “native citizen” as used by Rawles and Tucker,
“It is not too much to say, that no one, but a native citizen, ought ordinarily to be intrusted sic with an office so vital to the safety and liberties of the people.”
Earlier, in his opinion in the 1830 case Inglis v. The Trustees of Sailor’s Snug Harbor, Story wrote,
“Now, allegiance is nothing more than the tie or duty of obedience of a subject to the sovereign under whose protection he is, and allegiance by birth is that which arises from being born within the dominions and under the protection of a particular sovereign. Two things usually concur to create citizenship: first, birth locally within the dominions of the sovereign, and secondly, birth within the protection and obedience, or, in other words, within the ligeance of the sovereign. That is, the party must be born within a place where the sovereign is at the time in full possession and exercise of his power, and the party must also at his birth derive protection from, and, consequently, owe obedience or allegiance to, the sovereign, as such, de facto.”
See also the 1844 case in the New York Court of Chancery Lynch v. Clarke in which the court explicitly stated that natural born citizenship derived from place of birth, AND that this finding is quite in line with English common law, upon which every state’s (except Louisiana) laws, as well as the Constitution, are rooted.
We should also note the simple fact that the 14th amendment as affirmed by several cases postdating, including but certainly not limited to the Wong Kim Ark case, also makes the distinction been those who are born in the USA and those who are naturalised - the former are NBCs, the latter are not.
Another good resources - The Natural Born Citizen Clause as Originally Understood
QUITE clearly, natural born citizenship depends on place of birth in our common law system, not on Vattel’s (non)argument for parentage.
But it is clear on who is a citizen under the constitution, and provides that those who are not, may be made citizens by act of Congress pursuant to the power to make rule of naturalization.