“I concur that it’s confusing, but I think it was meant to be, which is a side argument I have been waging in recent days.”
I have to sharply disagree based upon the centuries of precedent law in which naturalized subjects in Britain/England, France, and many other nations were restricted by law from serving in official offices of the government, a prime example being the ineligibility to serve on the Privy Council and a broad variety of other offices named in Calvin’s Case 1608 and other such historical statuses and cases. The Founding Fathers understood this very well. It was one of the reasons why George Washington was being rejected as a candidate for becoming an officer in the British Army. although he was born as a British subject, the fact that he was a colonial set him apart as a naturalized British subject until Parliament attempted to usurp the charters of the colonies and incorporate their political entities into that of the Union of the United Kingdom of Great Britian. This was at the time when the Crown was transitioning the government from the more feudal personal sovereignty over the individual Kingdom/s, duchies, and colonies to that of an Empire with a union of the kingdoms and so forth. These changes engendered a difference in how England’s and Britain’s Parliamentarians and legal scholars treated the nationality of the Crown’s subjects. There was an old English law, the name escapes me at the moment, but the law treated individuals differently for purposes of determining nationality and the inheritance of real property based upon jus sanguine versus jus soli within the dominions of the sovereign. In one case oa person born in Anglo-Norman France the King’s subject could inherit only in the Anglo-Norma or Anglo-French domain of the Crown and not in England, whereas in another case the child could inherit in both domains, Anglo-Norman or Anglo-French real property and real property in England. It may have been cited in Calvin’s Case 1608, I don’t recall at the moment? In any case, a perusal of the history of these naturalization laws and laws regarding denizens reveals a traditional bias against allowing those persons born abroad to be accorded the privileges and powers of government office. The Founding Fathers considered such restrictions upon U.S. officers such as U.s. Senators and more, but in the end they limited the restrictions to only the president and the Vice President. As John Jay noted, this was specifically to keep foreigners, meaning those with a foreign birth, from becoming the commander in chief of the American Army, which is in perfect conformance with centuries of historical practices, except for its being so strikingly more liberal than past British, French, and Spanish practices (excepting such examples as the Wild Geese).
“I have tried to use original intent to make a basis for a separate argument about the definition of the term “jurisdiction†at the time of the original writing. “
Jurisdiction does have some latitude with respect to the powers exercised by the civil versus the military courts, however Congress used its enumerated powers with respect to naturalization and the ability to constitute courts inferior tto the Supreme court of the United States to circumscribe the extent of those jurisdictions. In particular, case law from United States v. Wong Kim Ark and others have clearly defined birth abroad, other than diplomatic immunity, as being outside the jurisdiction of the United States. There simply is no wiggle room or doubt to be exploited in the question of whether or not the children born abroad are naturalized or native u.S. citizens. The courts have very firmly stated all such children are naturalized U.S. citizens. They even went further and found these children are naturalized and not eligible to be President or Vice President of the United States.
“To me there is just as much or more danger in a native born situation with potential divided loyalties as there might be with a foreign born child.”
Whether there is or not is a moot point until and unless the Constitution is lawfully changed with an Amendment that removes the natural born citizen clause. Senator Orrin Hatch, Republican Utah, attempted to do precisely that and failed with a bill he introduced sometime around 2001. This should have been an indication that the natural born citizen clause was to be acknowledged and respected as the law of the land for the purpose of denying the Office of the President and the Office of the Vice President to naturalized U.S. citizens.
“I also see no security issue with cruz’s birth, but if there was, a case could be made and it might have standing.”
If the Constitution’s natural born citizen clause had been respected when the Republican’s put Chester Arthur in the Office of the President, we may not have had the Supreme Cort justice who writing a majority opinion that saddled the U.S. with an immigration policy that arguably resulted in the anchor babies spurring millions of illegal immigrants. We also would definitely had the Obama Administration and its illegal conduct and corruption of the Supreme Court. Violating the rule of law of the Constitution and its natural born citizen clause does have bad consequences, and compounding the violations for the sake of political expediency can be expected to make those bad consequences far worse in the future if they are not reversed to restore the rule of law and restore credibility to self rule in this Republic.
“With no issue at large, the courts in a political argument are likely to pass and kick the ball to congress. and again with no issue, no argument will be made and cruz, if elected could take office.”
It has long been quite obvious the Congress, the Office of the President, and the Supreme Court have all been compromised quite extensively with respect to the rule of law and respect for the limitations upon government exercised by the Constitution. In such circumstances, the States and the Citizens are responsible for making the Federal Government accountable for their unlawful conduct. So far, the majority of the States and the majority of the Citizens refuse and/or fail to do so. Unfortunately, the acrimony on FreeRepublic demonstrates there are too many people who claim to want the blessings of the Republic, yet they choose to defy the rule of law, the Constitution, using the excuses of political expediency to avoid restraining their own abuses of the laws designed to protect them.
“So as it is now, vattel and Blackburn don’t mean anything..”
You mean Vattel and Blackstone. On the contrary, they are still being cited as legal authorities in the present day Supreme Court decisions, so they remain highly relevant as the case law so ably demonstrates in cases decided in the 1950s and in 2008 District of Columbia v. Heller, that defended the 2nd Amendment right to keep and bear arms.
“It would be my preference that Cruz be constitutionally eligible by way of natural born, and you could get there by using jurisdiction in the old English parlance regarding subjects.”
On the contrary, whether Blackstone’s Commentaries are used Vattel’s Law of Nations, the various English naturalization acts, the French naturalization acts, or the American and U.S. naturalization acts, none of those authorities recognized a person born abroad in the jurisdiction of a foreign sovereign as anything other than a denizen or a naturalized national who was then denied the opportunity to serve in the Privy Council other official government offices. The historical precedents simply do not allow a person born abroad to be recognized as a natural born citizen, except when they enjoy some form of diplomatic immunity that shields them from the jurisdiction and allegiance of the foreign sovereign. Anyone who doubts the truth of this history only needs to demonstrate a consistent record where persons born abroad were knowingly and consistently acknowledged as natural born citizens by England, Britain, America, and/or the United States. Note, such persons who are described as persons to henceforth be “considered as natural born citizens, are by the meaning of those wrods not natural born citizens. Again, this is demonstrated by the construction of the language and by the Supreme Court decisions in which they said such persons are naturalize and not native or not natural born.
“In my opinion the wording indicates that his citizen birth status as a result of his mothers qualifications give him the presidential privileges of a natural born. But not constitutionally as I would much prefer.”
The part where you say, “his citizen birth status as a result of his mothers qualifications”, is demonstrated in the Immigration and Naturalization Act of 1952 to grant Ted Cruz the opportunity to adopt naturalized U.S. citizenship at birth as demonstrated by the naturalization act, the Foreign Affairs Manual, and the previously cited case law, not the least of which is Wong Kim Ark (1898) explicitly saying such persons born abroad are no more than a naturalized U.S. citizen and not native born or natural born. Anyone who wished to argue differently will have to come up with a legal authority that countermands these cited legal authorities and the vast history of such persons born abroad acquiring citizenship or nationality only by naturalization or being made a denizen.
I will and after much hair pulling, concur that I can find no such legal authority that I can point to, other than opinion and what looks like authority under statute.
Even in English common law you can find this opinion but not something that stands out as legal authority, In the US constitution there is the granted authority to congress to define and regulate naturalization but not NBC as it appears.
I don't have any argument over what a natural born citizen is, I think it's obvious that it is based on Jus Solei and that is quite clear.
Having said that, where is the barrier preventing Congress from establishing a naturalization class that has the same rights as a NBC?
I believe, but am open to being corrected, that they did exactly that and have done over the many decades since the founding. But the cases of this by their nature are quite rare. SCOTUS has never adjudicated a similar or like case that I can see, which is probably responsible for this argument and speculation, and that is not going to be settled for this election.
Thank you very much for the detailed explanation. That makes for the type of discussion that I appreciate so much on this forum. I wish that there were a way for Ted Cruz to expedite a definitive ruling from the judicial branch, but others here seem to think that this is not possible. I do not believe that using ridicule and a stream of questionable documents would put the eligibility issue to rest as it did for Obama. Sadly Cruz is never going to get sympathetic treatment from the Democrats or the press and probably not even the GOP establishment.