Posted on 05/08/2013 8:03:24 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
In one of my first essays for NRO back in 2005 (“Are You an Originalist?”), I selected the Constitution’s “natural born Citizen” criterion for eligibility to be president—a provision that then seemed at the time to be beyond the distorting effects of political bias—to illustrate that everyone intuitively recognizes the common-sense principle at the heart of the interpretive methodology of originalism: namely, that the meaning of a constitutional provision is to be determined in accordance with the meaning that it bore at the time that it was adopted. The public debate in 2008 over whether John McCain, having been born in 1936 in the Panama Canal Zone to parents who were American citizens, was a “natural born Citizen” ratified my point, as virtually all commentators purported to undertake an originalist inquiry.
I hadn’t seen any reason to comment on the left-wing “birther” attacks on Senator Ted Cruz’s eligibility to be president. Cruz was born in Canada in 1970 to a mother who was then an American citizen. Under the laws then in place, he was an American citizen by virtue of his birth.
As this Congressional Research Service report sums it up (p. 25; see also pp. 16-21), the “overwhelming evidence of historical intent, general understandings [in 18th-century America], and common law principles underlying American jurisprudence thus indicate[s] that the most reasonable interpretation of ‘natural born’ citizens would include those who are considered U.S. citizens ‘at birth’ or ‘by birth,’ … under existing federal statutory law incorporating long-standing concepts of jus sanguinis, the law of descent.” In other words, there is strong originalist material to support the semantic signal that “natural born Citizen” identifies someone who is a citizen by virtue of the circumstances of his birth—as distinguished from someone who is naturalized later in life as a citizen. (In McCain’s case, the dispute turned on whether he was indeed an American citizen by virtue of his birth—or was instead naturalized a citizen under a law enacted when he was eleven months old. For more, see law professor Gabriel Chin’s lengthy article making the case against McCain.)
To my surprise, the New Republic’s Noam Scheiber tries to argue that Cruz’s embrace of constitutional originalism somehow means that Cruz can’t determine that he is a “natural born Citizen.” But the only evidence that Scheiber offers for this position is the assertion (which Scheiber mischaracterizes as a concession) by a non-originalist law professor in an MSNBC interview that the proposition that a person is a “natural born Citizen” if he is a citizen by virtue of his birth “isn’t really clear cut if you limit yourself to the actual wording of the Constitution” (that’s Scheiber’s paraphrase) but instead depends on “how our understandings have evolved over time.” Scheiber both overlooks the powerful originalist evidence in support of Cruz’s status as a “natural born Citizen” and misunderstands how originalist methodology operates. (In public-meaning originalism, you don’t “limit yourself to the actual wording of the Constitution,” and you don’t find yourself lost simply because the Constitution “never defines what ‘natural born’ means.” You instead look to the public meaning of the term at the time it was adopted.)
My point here isn’t to contend that the originalist evidence points entirely in one direction. As law professor Michael Ramsey observes in a post that I’ve run across while finalizing this post (a post that also takes issue with Scheiber), there are originalist scholars who don’t “find the argument entirely conclusive.” But Scheiber’s piece is a cheap whack at Cruz as well as a cheap whack at originalism.
I didn’t ask for a link. Your inability to read makes your attempt to persuade even shakier than before.
“I didn’t ask for a link. Your inability to read makes your attempt to persuade even shakier than before.”
See? I CAN read after all!
No, actually you can’t read. Again, I didn’t ask for a link. Copy and paste the actual citations. I’m not hunting for whatever it is you think was cited. Your inability or refusal to do this makes your claim less and less credible.
Pretty far away from the founding era if you ask me. Obviously whatever contamination had been introduced into the system by Rawle, et al, had manifested itself by 1894.
Well of course it's stupid to think our system of government is modeled after the Swiss. Obviously it's modeled after the English, and that's why we have a MONARCHY as our form of government.
Sometimes I think you are so stupid and smartmouthed, that it' really isn't worth my time to respond to your childish crap.
Yes it is, and you should stop writing it.
ROTFL!
Jeff is easily amused... Like a child, I think. The Supreme Court sometimes reverses previous decisions because they decided them stupidly in the first place.
It is a part and parcel of the entire methodology of the court system. They are so full of sophist arguments that they can't even keep the law straight in their own minds.
The Fact that it says "Son of a Freeholder" pretty much screws your argument. You see, according to YOUR theory, that passage shouldn't exist.
The Fact that it was created by James Wilson And Benjamin Franklin is also a serious blow to your theory. They were both delegates to the Constitutional Convention.
“Well of course it’s stupid to think our system of government is modeled after the Swiss. Obviously it’s modeled after the English, and that’s why we have a MONARCHY as our form of government.”
I’m repeating what you wrote, so anyone with more than one brain cell can have their daily laugh.
Sorry again, the site where the Purpura v. Obama order is located does not permit copying without paying a membership fee and I’m not willing to spend the money. Besides, anyone can selectively edit a copy and paste. Links take readers directly to the source document where it can be read in full context, even if, in this case, its just a footnote citing Minor v. Happersett and US v. Wong Kim Ark.
Its Saturday and I’m not working today so I will type the footnote for you. You can check its accuracy by the simple act of clicking on the link!
Footnote 2, page 6, Initial Decision Purpura & Moran v. Obama:
“The Wong Kim Ark decision was preceded by Minor v. Happersett, 88 (21 Wall.) U.S. 162, 167, 22 L.Ed. 627 (1874), where the Supreme Court stated that while the Constitution did not say in words “ who shall be natural-born citizens” there were “some authorities” who held that “children born within the jurisdiction without reference to the citizenship of their parents” were citizens. The Court concludes that it was not necessary to decide that issue in Minor. Wong Kim Ark more directly addresses the issue of who is “natural-born” although it is acknowledged that neither of these cases involved the use of the term in connection with a presidential candidate and the unique Constitutional requirements for holding that office. Nevertheless, the Wong Kim Ark ruling certainly goes very far in defining the term and its meaning in this country. And the decision does not suggest that the common law rule identified therein only applied at the state level and not on a national basis, as counsel here claims.”
There are additional citations to Inglis v Trustees of Sailors’ Snug Harbor, 28 US (3 Pet) 99, 7L. Ed. 617 (1830) and United States v. Rhodes, 1 Abbott 26, 40, 41 (1860) and cites to several contemporary ballot challenge rulings such as the 2012 Georgia challenge Farrar, et. al. v. Obama and the 2008 election Indiana challenge, Ankeny v. Daniels.
You post more than once per day.
Jeff said: “You have no answer to the facts provided that show that claims made, by you and others, are simply untrue.
And yet you keep making the same claims over and over, when they’ve been shown to be false.
Given that that’s the case, how exactly do you think you and some of the others here who are doing this should be treated? Should we treat you as if you are great sages? Or should we treat you as if you’re cranks?
I vote for cranks. Because that is what your behavior shows you to be.”
My response to Jeff:
You have no answer to the facts provided that show that claims made, by you and others, are simply untrue.
And yet you keep making the same claims over and over, when they’ve been shown to be false.
Given that that’s the case, how exactly do you think you and some of the others here who are doing this should be treated? Should we treat you as if you are great sages? Or should we treat you as if you’re cranks?
Hmmm. I think I may be guilty of plagiarism, but I’m not sure. Seems I’ve heard the words I just wrote somewhere before, but I don’t know if they were in my head or I read them somewhere. Oh, well, if I did plagiarize something, maybe I’m destined for Vice President like Joe Biden.
The court system has the RESPONSIBILITY of doing it, what they do not have is COMPETENCE! They are a joke, and we should treat them as such.
Granting them respect is detrimental to the best interest of the nation in my opinion. Far too long have they been twisting our laws and behaving as dictatorial Oligarchs. Everybody knows that if Obama puts one more Liberal on the court, the court is going to take a Hard left turn, and it won't have a D@Mned thing to do with the Law!
You don't get it. They are like the Vichy French. They are imposed on us but they don't represent us or our laws. They have simply become the spear head of the Socialist movement.
No, it doesn't. Once again, you spin absolute BS.
Nowhere does it say that only "sons of freeholders" are citizens.
You're an idiot.
But I repeat myself.
Name one point I haven't commented on.
Show one claim I've made that's false.
By the way, I can name literally DOZENS of claims made by birthers, and show exactly why they are fallacious arguments.
I intend to eventually get around to posting all of this in one place. It just needs to be edited.
I’m up to around 45 fallacious arguments so far.
The battle is really over. Your theory was wrong. It lost, because it just wasn’t true.
You and the rest of the birthers need to get over it.
Please point to the post where this claim is made.
I suppose. Of course it's 119 years closer to that era than you are.
I just noticed another part of the book that might interest you. He writes
Accustomed as we are to the progress of free institutions in civilized lands during the present century, it is difficult to realize that in 1787, at the time this Convention met, the only nations that actually possessed such liberties were England and little Switzerland.But in a footnote to that sentence, he adds
No one claims that the Constitution of the United States is indebted to Switzerland for its characteristics. In the debates of the Philadelphia Convention, Swiss institutions were mentioned only to be criticised. — See Elliot's Debates, V. 201, 208, 236.
Jeff wrote:
“By the way, I can name literally DOZENS of claims made by birthers, and show exactly why they are fallacious arguments.
I’m up to around 45 fallacious arguments so far.
The battle is really over. Your theory was wrong. It lost, because it just wasn’t true.”
My Response to Jeff is:
By the way, I can name literally DOZENS of claims made by after-birthers, and show exactly why they are fallacious arguments.
I’m up to at least 45 fallacious arguments so far.
The battle is really over. Your theory was wrong. It lost, because it just wasn’t true.
The point was not that you haven’t commented, it was:
“You have no answer to the facts provided that show that claims made, by you and others, are simply untrue.”
The fact is, a natural born citizen is a person born in a country to two citizen parents because he/she can be nothing else. For some strange reason you guys want to expand that definition to something that would put the President of the United States subject to the laws of another country. I don’t understand you.
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