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“There is precedent on what to call a person (citizen-at-birth, no Naturalization Certificate) born abroad to a citizen mother and alien father. Mr. Bellei was naturalized US citizen. So is Cruz.
You want to bet money SCOTUS will reverse about 200 years of rock-solid consistent precedent to rescue Cruz? Or are you planning to fool the public and hope SCOTUS never takes it up, once the people have spoken? “

I have no idea the outcome. I only state the fact it is unsettled, for the benefit of those who claim otherwise.

There are claims on both sides. None conclusive.

When I was in school decades back, the teaching was born on US soil, unless overseas as a diplomat.

By that criteria George Romney did not qualify, but dropped out before it became an issue.

The Senate dealt with McCain in effect deciding his Panamanian birth was like a diplomat situation.

Cruz’ parents clearly were not diplomats or military.

If Trump continues his lead, it will probably not be pursued further with Cruz.

There is precedent on what to call a person (citizen-at-birth, no Naturalization Certificate) born abroad to a citizen mother and alien father. Mr. Bellei was naturalized US citizen. So is Cruz.

I looked it up and the Supreme Court definitely seems to directly disagree with the recent position paper by certain Harvard Law Review hacks. In Rogers v. Bellei (1971), the SCOTUS found the following:

"Every person born in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof becomes at once a citizen of the United States, and needs no naturalization. A person born out of the jurisdiction of the United States can only become a citizen by being naturalized, either by treaty, as in the case of the annexation of foreign territory; or by authority of Congress, exercised either by declaring certain classes of persons to be citizens, as in the enactments conferring citizenship upon foreign-born children of citizens," (emphasis mine).

I'm not a lawyer, but this sure seems to support Trump's case against Cruz, but maybe I am misunderstanding this SCOTUS decision. (I don't think this is just orbiter dicta.)

I agree with you Mr. Choldt. Unfortunately, Obama’s appointees, Sotomayor and Kagan have already refused to recuse themselves when participating in the “Rule of Four”, deciding which cases could be heard. Alito Thomas and Scalia would be very much a minority. This court may restructure our Constitution in ways we can’t predict. They have already prevented certiorari in the Kerchner/Apuzzo challenge to Obama’s eligibility. Had they recused themselves, Alito, Scalia, and Thomas would have been sufficient to hear what amounted to a confirmation of Minor v. Happersett.

Today, many, including Cruz, Obama, and both political parties (only one Republican, Nathan Deal of Georgia, publicly raised the fact of Obama’s eligibility. Deal was responded to with an IRS reexamination of a decade of filings, followed by ethics charges. That is likely why no one else dared. Perhaps the only response to the rewriting of the Constitution is what Mark Levine, who seems already to have joined the anti-constitutionalists, provided an answer, the use of Article V to reverse amendments. It was sad to see Mark misuse and misquote, lie about the 14th Amendment. But his use of Article V seems a valid last resort where corruption is so deep.

There is no law requiring Supreme Court justices to recuse themselves. Today you must vote yes “in order to find out what was in the bill”. Kagan and Sotomayor would have lost their lifetime appointments, and millions of dollars in salary and benefits if Obama, who never claimed to be a natural born citizen, had been ruled ineligible.

Lest anyone forget, here is the Supreme Court’s never amended definition of who are natural born citizens, Minor v. Happerset, 88 U.S. 162:

“The Constitution does not, in words, say who shall be natural-born citizens. Resort must be had elsewhere to ascertain that. At common-law, with the nomenclature of which the framers of the Constitution were familiar, it was never doubted that all children born in a country of parents who were its citizens became themselves, upon their birth, citizens also. These were natives, or natural-born citizens, as distinguished from aliens or foreigners.”