Replies

-- Whats really discouraging to me is how many here are asserting Cruz's non-eligibility, and with such gusto ... --

I find that off-putting too. It feels like gloating, and is bad juju all around. It buys no converts, pushes "the opposition" deeper in their trenches, and all in all creates unnecessary hostility. Both sides guilty, for sure.

-- which relevant case are you referring to? --

First, they aren't "directly on point cases" because there has never been a presidential eligibility case. Technically, until there is a presidential eligibility case, the issue will always be "undecided." But at the same time, the cases contain discussion that majority and dissent all agree on, that absolutely, if applied, decides the Cruz case. I'll just lift a few paragraphs from one case, there are many others.

The application of these respective statutes to a person in plaintiff Bellei's position [similar to Cruz, citizen mother, alien father, born abroad, statutory conditions for attaching citizenship met] produces the following results:
1. Not until 1934 would that person have had any conceivable claim to United States citizenship. For more than a century and a half, no statute was of assistance. Maternal citizenship afforded no benefit. One may observe, too, that, if Mr. Bellei had been born in 1933, instead of in 1939, he would have no claim even today. Montana v. Kennedy, supra. ...
Mr. Justice Gray has observed that the first sentence of the Fourteenth Amendment was "declaratory of existing rights, and affirmative of existing law," so far as the qualifications of being born in the United States, being naturalized in the United States, and being subject to its jurisdiction are concerned. United States v. Wong Kim Ark, 169 U.S. at 169 U. S. 688. Then follows a most significant sentence:

"But it [the first sentence of the Fourteenth Amendment] has not touched the acquisition of citizenship by being born abroad of American parents; and has left that subject to be regulated, as it had always been, by Congress, in the exercise of the power conferred by the Constitution to establish an uniform rule of naturalization." ...

[From the dissent, again, this is nothing more than an observation of law, not a controlling factor in the Bellei case]
Bellei was not "born . . . in the United States," but he was, constitutionally speaking, "naturalized in the United States." Although those Americans who acquire their citizenship under statutes conferring citizenship on the foreign-born children of citizens are not popularly thought of as naturalized citizens, the use of the word "naturalize" in this way has a considerable constitutional history. Congress is empowered by the Constitution to "establish an uniform Rule of Naturalization," Art. I, S: 8. Anyone acquiring citizenship solely under the exercise of this power is, constitutionally speaking, a naturalized citizen.

Rogers v. Bellei, 401 U.S. 815 (1971)

My personal view is that Cruz is not an NBC, but that question can't and won't be decided by a court, so is roughly an academic curiosity.

Courts will decline to take the case, because the constitution says it is up to Congress to determine questions of qualification of the president. See 20th Amendment.

Cruz can bluff his way through. The presumption of "qualified" has been certified by the GOP to all the states. Most people think "deemed qualified" is the same as "is qualified," and the nitty gritty details of precedent won't be known to but a few people who bother to look it up. The public will be swamped with articles by experts, learned professors, etc. that will add heft to the false conclusion (although making people think it is true).

If Cruz wins the nomination and the election, Congress will seat him, and no court will touch a sitting president. It is literally up to the people, acting directly, to enforce this part of the constitution.