Posted on 04/11/2016 12:20:43 PM PDT by RoosterRedux
A New Jersey administrative law judge on Monday heard two challenges to GOP presidential candidate Ted Cruz's eligibility to appear on the New Jersey ballot, based upon the Texas senator's birthplace in Canada.
The judge, Jeff Masin, didn't decide the challenges to Cruz's eligibility to appear on the June 7 primary ballot, but said he would issue a decision Tuesday. The decision is expected to be reviewed by Lt. Gov. Kim Guadagno, who is New Jersey's secretary of state.
One of the challenges was brought by three South Jersey citizens, and the other by a law professor who lives in Maryland and is running for president as a write-in candidate in New Jersey. Both parties argued that because Cruz was born in Canada, he is not a natural-born citizen, making him ineligible for the presidency.
Cruz's mother was born in Delaware, while his father was born in Cuba. The senator released his birth certificate in 2013.
Shalom Stone, a New Jersey attorney representing Cruz, argued that the citizens - Fernando Powers of Blackwood, Donna Ward of Mantua, and Bruce Stom of Winslow Township - and Prof. Victor Williams didn't have standing to challenge Cruz's candidacy. Stone also said the state didn't have authority to decide the question.
As for "natural-born citizen," Stone said the words in the U.S. Constitution "have meaning given to them by English common law" at the time of their adoption. He directed Masin to his brief for cases supporting Cruz's position.
(Excerpt) Read more at philly.com ...
It was sarcasm.... /s
McCain had to have Congress pass a resolution in order to make sure he could run for president.
McConnell has refused to do anything like that for Ted... seems Ted has no American parentage to point to, and has the nation of CANADA on his birth certificate...
Ted Asked.
The Senate said NO.
Dammit, stop posting those facts.
I don’t think its fair to blame the Trump team or to say this is their strategy. These questions arise because people are sensitized from BO. They arise from concerned American citizens who do not want the situation of BO to create a precedent.
All allegedly.
At least I believe Cruz's parents are who he claims they are, and where he was born. (all of which makes him ineligible)
Trump has small hands!!! I mean REALLY small hands!!!
This birther thing started by, and pushed by, Mr. Trump is 3rd grade stupid.
Waste of time!!!
There have been Cruz eligbility challenges adjudicated in at least nine states thus far. Are you aware of any proof of eligibility being entered into evidence by Senator Cruz in any of those challenges? I’m not.
When Barack Obama’s natural born citizenship was being challenged, two states’ Chief Elections Officers (Arizona and Kansas) went the extra mile and got Certified Letters of Verification for his Certificate of Live Birth from the state of Hawaii. Obama’s eligibility was legally challenged 226 times, most of the lawsuits didn’t even involve a defense by Obama. In 27 challenges at the U.S. Supreme Court, there was no legal brief submitted by Obama.
Obama’s attorneys submitted copies of his birth certificate in only 2 lawsuits, once in Georgia and once in Mississippi.
I would agree that proof of citizenship and identity is needed to get on the ballot. Candidates use their driver’s licenses, a U.S. Passport or a birth certificate as well as notorized statements to meet that requirement.
I was talking only about the court challenges.
I have never seen anyone suggest that parents need to be NBC to create one. The parents must be citizens, and the child needs to be born on US soil or to a diplomat on the country’s business.
The trail is fascinating on NBC. The Founders were passionate about it, especially James Madison. We still have correspondence between them on the subject at the time of the Constitution and over the ensuing years.
What happened is Cruz supporters do not believe in the U.S. Constitution. They know that there is a huge difference between being a citizen and a naturalized citizen. James Madison understood that even U.S. citizens produce aliens if they are born on anything but American soil. That is why he insisted the poorly written Naturalization Law of 1790 be changed and NBC removed, never to reappear. Every citizenship document I read states that children born overseas must become naturalized. While it is automatic it is still a naturalization. Only a citizen born on American soil is natural born; doesn’t have to go through a naturalization process and is eligible for president. Cruz people don’t WANT to understand that.
They are also very selfish. Cruz has no chance to obtain the required number of delegates so he should have done the honorable thing and drop out so that the PEOPLE can elect someone and not the GOPe. True Americans would ask Cruz to drop out. I know I would do that if the situation was reversed and Trump was sucking on the hind teat instead of Cruz.
If King George had a love child with an American citizen shortly after the revolution, would the founders deem that child a NBC able to hold the highest office in the land? Of course not.
Cruz is not qualified, divided loyalties at birth. And no, I do not need some court to tell me that, it is very self evident.
So far, TEN U.S. courts or commissioners have ruled on challenges against Cruz’ eligibility for president and ALL have ruled in his favor.
But hey, some folks just KNOW better I guess...well, ‘cause they just know.
Not everyone sees it that way, and certainly not all the Founders saw it that way.
There are two sides to every argument.
A little light reading on the subject......
:)
The Constitution directly addresses the minimum qualifications necessary to serve as President. In addition to requiring thirty-five years of age and fourteen years of residency, the Constitution limits the presidency to “a natural born Citizen.
U.S. Const. art. II, § 1, cl. 5.
All the sources routinely used to interpret the Constitution confirm that the phrase “natural born Citizen” has a specific meaning: namely, someone who was a U.S. citizen at birth with no need to go through a naturalization proceeding at some later time. And Congress has made equally clear from the time of the framing of the Constitution to the current day that, subject to certain residency requirements on the parents, someone born to a U.S. citizen parent generally becomes a U.S. citizen without regard to whether the birth takes place in Canada, the Canal Zone, or the continental United States.
See, e.g., 8 U.S.C. § 1401(g) (2012); Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952, Pub. L. No. 82-414, § 303, 66 Stat. 163, 236–37; Act of May 24, 1934, Pub. L. No. 73-250, 48 Stat. 797.
While some constitutional issues are truly difficult, with framing-era sources either nonexistent or contradictory, here, the relevant materials clearly indicate that a “natural born Citizen” means a citizen from birth with no need to go through naturalization proceedings. The Supreme Court has long recognized that two particularly useful sources in understanding constitutional terms are British common law
See Smith v. Alabama, 124 U.S. 465, 478 (1888).
and enactments of the First Congress.4×
See Wisconsin v. Pelican Ins. Co., 127 U.S. 265, 297 (1888).
Both confirm that the original meaning of the phrase “natural born Citizen” includes persons born abroad who are citizens from birth based on the citizenship of a parent.
As to the British practice, laws in force in the 1700s recognized that children born outside of the British Empire to subjects of the Crown were subjects themselves and explicitly used “natural born” to encompass such children.5×
See United States v. Wong Kim Ark, 169 U.S. 649, 655–72 (1898).
These statutes provided that children born abroad to subjects of the British Empire were “natural-born Subjects . . . to all Intents, Constructions, and Purposes whatsoever.”
7 Ann., c. 5, § 3 (1708); see also British Nationality Act, 1730, 4 Geo. 2, c. 21.
The Framers, of course, would have been intimately familiar with these statutes and the way they used terms like “natural born,” since the statutes were binding law in the colonies before the Revolutionary War. They were also well documented in Blackstone’s Commentaries,7×
See William Blackstone, Commentaries *354–63.
a text widely circulated and read by the Framers and routinely invoked in interpreting the Constitution.
No doubt informed by this longstanding tradition, just three years after the drafting of the Constitution, the First Congress established that children born abroad to U.S. citizens were U.S. citizens at birth, and explicitly recognized that such children were “natural born Citizens.” The Naturalization Act of 1790
Ch. 3, 1 Stat. 103 (repealed 1795
provided that “the children of citizens of the United States, that may be born beyond sea, or out of the limits of the United States, shall be considered as natural born citizens: Provided, That the right of citizenship shall not descend to persons whose fathers have never been resident in the United States . . . .”
The actions and understandings of the First Congress are particularly persuasive because so many of the Framers of the Constitution were also members of the First Congress. That is particularly true in this instance, as eight of the eleven members of the committee that proposed the natural born eligibility requirement to the Convention served in the First Congress and none objected to a definition of “natural born Citizen” that included persons born abroad to citizen parents.
See Christina S. Lohman, Presidential Eligibility: The Meaning of the Natural-Born Citizen Clause, 36 Gonz. L. Rev. 349, 371 (2000/01).
The proviso in the Naturalization Act of 1790 underscores that while the concept of “natural born Citizen” has remained constant and plainly includes someone who is a citizen from birth by descent without the need to undergo naturalization proceedings, the details of which individuals born abroad to a citizen parent qualify as citizens from birth have changed. The pre-Revolution British statutes sometimes focused on paternity such that only children of citizen fathers were granted citizenship at birth.
The Naturalization Act of 1790 expanded the class of citizens at birth to include children born abroad of citizen mothers as long as the father had at least been resident in the United States at some point. But Congress eliminated that differential treatment of citizen mothers and fathers before any of the potential candidates in the current presidential election were born. Thus, in the relevant time period, and subject to certain residency requirements, children born abroad of a citizen parent were citizens from the moment of birth, and thus are “natural born Citizens.”
The original meaning of “natural born Citizen” also comports with what we know of the Framers’ purpose in including this language in the Constitution. The phrase first appeared in the draft Constitution shortly after George Washington received a letter from John Jay, the future first Chief Justice of the United States, suggesting:
[W]hether it would not be wise & seasonable to provide a . . . strong check to the admission of Foreigners into the administration of our national Government; and to declare expressly that the Command in chief of the american [sic] army shall not be given to, nor devolve on, any but a natural born Citizen.
As recounted by Justice Joseph Story in his famous Commentaries on the Constitution, the purpose of the natural born Citizen clause was thus to “cut[] off all chances for ambitious foreigners, who might otherwise be intriguing for the office; and interpose[] a barrier against those corrupt interferences of foreign governments in executive elections.
Joseph Story, Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States § 1473, at 333 (1833).
The Framers did not fear such machinations from those who were U.S. citizens from birth just because of the happenstance of a foreign birthplace. Indeed, John Jay’s own children were born abroad while he served on diplomatic assignments, and it would be absurd to conclude that Jay proposed to exclude his own children, as foreigners of dubious loyalty, from presidential eligibility.
See Michael Nelson, Constitutional Qualifications for President, 17 Presidential Stud. Q. 383, 396 (1987).
Despite the happenstance of a birth across the border, there is no question that Senator Cruz has been a citizen from birth and is thus a “natural born Citizen” within the meaning of the Constitution. Indeed, because his father had also been resident in the United States, Senator Cruz would have been a “natural born Citizen” even under the Naturalization Act of 1790. Similarly, in 2008, one of the two major party candidates for President, Senator John McCain, was born outside the United States on a U.S. military base in the Panama Canal Zone to a U.S. citizen parent.1
See Michael Dobbs, John McCain’s Birthplace, Wash. Post: Fact Checker (May 20, 2008, 6:00 AM), http://voices.washingtonpost.com/fact-checker/2008/05/john_mccains_birthplace.html [http://perma.cc/5DKV-C7VE].
Despite a few spurious suggestions to the contrary, there is no serious question that Senator McCain was fully eligible to serve as President, wholly apart from any murky debate about the precise sovereign status of the Panama Canal Zone at the time of Senator McCain’s birth.17×
Indeed, this aspect of Senator McCain’s candidacy was a source of bipartisan accord. The U.S. Senate unanimously agreed that Senator McCain was eligible for the presidency, resolving that any interpretation of the natural born citizenship clause as limited to those born within the United States was “inconsistent with the purpose and intent of the ‘natural born Citizen’ clause of the Constitution of the United States, as evidenced by the First Congress’s own statute defining the term ‘natural born Citizen.
S. Res. 511, 110th Cong. (2008)
.
And for the same reasons, both Senator Barry Goldwater and Governor George Romney were eligible to serve as President although neither was born within a state. Senator Goldwater was born in Arizona before its statehood and was the Republican Party’s presidential nominee in 1964,19×
19. See Bart Barnes, Barry Goldwater, GOP Hero, Dies, Wash. Post, May 30, 1998, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/daily/may98/goldwater30.htm [http://perma.cc/K2MG-3PZL].
and Governor Romney was born in Mexico to U.S. citizen parents and unsuccessfully pursued the Republican nomination for President in 1968
See David E. Rosenbaum, George Romney Dies at 88; A Leading G.O.P. Figure, N.Y. Times, July 27, 1995, http://www.nytimes.com/1995/07/27/obituaries/george-romney-dies-at-88-a-leading-gop-figure.html.
There are plenty of serious issues to debate in the upcoming presidential election cycle. The less time spent dealing with specious objections to candidate eligibility, the better. Fortunately, the Constitution is refreshingly clear on these eligibility issues. To serve, an individual must be at least thirty-five years old and a “natural born Citizen.” Thirty-four and a half is not enough and, for better or worse, a naturalized citizen cannot serve. But as Congress has recognized since the Founding, a person born abroad to a U.S. citizen parent is generally a U.S. citizen from birth with no need for naturalization. And the phrase “natural born Citizen” in the Constitution encompasses all such citizens from birth. Thus, an individual born to a U.S. citizen parent — whether in California or Canada or the Canal Zone — is a U.S. citizen from birth and is fully eligible to serve as President if the people so choose.
The main issue for me in the above is that there are much more important issues to discuss in this race than Cruz birthplace.
Have a good week.
I may be mistaken. I thought that this challenge was different because the Secretary of State of NJ has not yet certified the candidates as eligible; they are on a “unofficial list” of “Candidates for President” dated April 4, 2016 Cruz,along with Bernie Sanders, Hillary Clinton, John Kasich, and Donald Trump, all of which show the number of signatures presented by each candidate.
According to a website page relating to filing a challenge to a candidate’s legitimacy, if the Office of Administrative Law (OAL) denies an objector’s challenge, the objector may appeal to the Superior Court of New Jersey, Appellate Division.
If you ask me I think that none of the challenges will work and everyone will kick the can down the road. I think its wrong but its what I expect.
He was a Communist and was imprisoned in Cuba for supporting Castro.
Thanks you too! Its always good to have a courteous disagreement. Sharpens the wits. Anytime you are interested we can resume. I’ll leave your last sally unsullied but will not affirm it.
All Ted has room do is release his docs and this issue goes away. So tell me, why hasn’t he released his docs?
Que the insults in 3,2,1...
Yes he is picking up delegates but for what purpose? He has no chance to get the required amount and he will always be BEHIND Trump. Some winner you got there! His plan is to steal the nomination. Nice guy!
This required Cruz to "come to the United States prior to attaining the age of twenty-three years and shall immediately following any such coming be continuously present in the United States for at least five years."
By what authority does Congress impose this requirement?
AHA!...The old man was A Cuban!
So Ted (born 1970) really is a Cubanadian®.
A three way citizen, Cuban, Canadian and (drum roll please) A RED, WHITE AND BLUE, NATURAL BORN US CITIZEN!
Imagine that.
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