The decision was indeed split, 5-4.
The majority held that a statute that conditioned citizenship of a foreign-born citizen on that citizen's residence in the US was constitutional, and that it was not unconstitutional to strip citizenship from such a statutory citizen if the residence conditions were not met.
The possibility of citizenship stripping doesn't associate with the statute, today
I take it you feel that this is the erroneous part of the decision. Feel free to correct me on that point, what part of the decision you find to be erroneous. I don't think it matters from an analytical standpoint.
The dissent would hold that statutory citizenship could not be stripped, that statutory citizenship is embodied in the 14th amendment, and 14th amendment citizenship can't be stripped.
The 14th amendment has two sources for citizenship. Born in the US, and naturalized. Cruz was not born in the US. You say that makes him a natural born citizen. The principle of law set out by the dissent, in non-binding dicta, would make Cruz a naturalized citizen.
I'll say it again, and I am not asserting what Cruz is, one way or the other, that if I'm Cruz, I don't want to be before a judge deciding this on the merits, and be confronted with the blockquote I lifted. I further want to minimize the number of people who know of this case, because not all of them will see it as editor-surveyor does, as an "erroneous statement of legal principle."
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Do you really believe that this country’s most prolific constitutional scholar doesn’t understand where he stands?
One of the handful of people that have the personal telephone numbers of the members of SCOTUS?
Think is becoming a rare commodity here.