Posted on 04/22/2016 10:14:11 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
A Utah lawyer has appealed a lawsuit to the U.S. Supreme Court, alleging Republican presidential candidate Texas Sen. Ted Cruz is not a "natural born citizen" and therefore ineligible to become president.
Legal scholars say there is virtually no chance the high court will consider the appeal, partly because they do not want to encourage a wave of similar suits.
Cruz has faced questions about his eligibility to become president from his chief rival, Donald Trump. Cruz was born in Canada, though his mother is a U.S. citizen.
The U.S. Constitution sets only a few standards for presidential eligibility. Candidates must be 35, have lived at least 14 years in the country and be a "natural born citizen."
To some, legal vagaries exist surrounding the constitutional language. Congress has never passed a law explicitly defining the term "natural born citizen" and the nation's founding document does not specify what qualifications someone must have.
For centuries, the courts have fallen back to the British common law explanation, that a "natural born citizen" is anyone who is granted citizenship at birth and, therefore, does not have to undergo any naturalization process later in life. Traditionally, that has included anyone born on American soil and the children of American citizens born abroad.
But that definition has generally not been tested in courts because federal judges are first bound to consider whether a plaintiff has standing to bring a lawsuit. To establish standing, someone making allegations has to pass the threshold they have been personally injured in some way.
(Excerpt) Read more at upi.com ...
About Obama, maybe.
> Legal scholars say there is virtually no chance the high court will consider the appeal, partly because they do not want to encourage a wave of similar suits.
That’s ass backwards. Lawsuits will continue until the issue is resolved.
Intent of the eligibility clause is documented and provides the necessary meaning.
The courts will continue to dodge this issue.
If they are forced to make a decision, they will uphold the current definition that simply being born a citizen is sufficient, ignoring all historical evidence and precedent.
They have already allowed an usurper into office and they will not do anything to overturn that egregious error.
Note the reference to Natural Law in the first sentence of our Declaration of Independence.
It is crystal clear that the Founding Fathers used the Natural Law definition of 'natural born Citizen' when they wrote Article II. By invoking "The Laws of Nature and Nature's God" the 56 signers of the Declaration incorporated a legal standard of freedom into the forms of government that would follow.
President John Quincy Adams, writing in 1839, looked back at the founding period and recognized the true meaning of the Declaration's reliance on the "Laws of Nature and of Nature's God." He observed that the American people's "charter was the Declaration of Independence. Their rights, the natural rights of mankind. Their government, such as should be instituted by the people, under the solemn mutual pledges of perpetual union, founded on the self-evident truth's proclaimed in the Declaration."
The Constitution, Vattel, and Natural Born Citizen: What Our Framers Knew
The Laws of Nature and of Nature's God: The True Foundation of American Law
The Supreme Court of the United States has never applied the term natural born citizen to any other category than those born in the country of parents who are citizens thereof.
Neither the 14th Amendment nor Wong Kim Ark make one a Natural Born Citizen
The Harvard Law Review Article Taken Apart Piece by Piece and Utterly Destroyed
Citizenship Terms Used in the U.S. Constitution - The 5 Terms Defined & Some Legal Reference to Same
"The citizenship of no man could be previous to the declaration of independence, and, as a natural right, belongs to none but those who have been born of citizens since the 4th of July, 1776."....David Ramsay, 1789.
A Dissertation on Manner of Acquiring Character & Privileges of Citizen of U.S.-by David Ramsay-1789
The Law of Nations or the Principles of Natural Law (1758)
The Laws of Nature and of Nature's God: The True Foundation of American Law
The Biggest Cover-up in American History
Supreme Court cases that cite natural born Citizen as one born on U.S. soil to citizen parents:
The Venus, 12 U.S. 8 Cranch 253 253 (1814)
Vattel, who, though not very full to this point, is more explicit and more satisfactory on it than any other whose work has fallen into my hands, says: The citizens are the members of the civil society; bound to this society by certain duties, and subject to its authority, they equally participate in its advantages. The natives or indigenes are those born in the country of parents who are citizens. Society not being able to subsist and to perpetuate itself but by the children of the citizens, those children naturally follow the condition of their fathers, and succeed to all their rights.
Shanks v. Dupont, 28 U.S. 3 Pet. 242 242 (1830)
Ann Scott was born in South Carolina before the American revolution, and her father adhered to the American cause and remained and was at his death a citizen of South Carolina. There is no dispute that his daughter Ann, at the time of the Revolution and afterwards, remained in South Carolina until December, 1782. Whether she was of age during this time does not appear. If she was, then her birth and residence might be deemed to constitute her by election a citizen of South Carolina. If she was not of age, then she might well be deemed under the circumstances of this case to hold the citizenship of her father, for children born in a country, continuing while under age in the family of the father, partake of his national character as a citizen of that country. Her citizenship, then, being prima facie established, and indeed this is admitted in the pleadings, has it ever been lost, or was it lost before the death of her father, so that the estate in question was, upon the descent cast, incapable of vesting in her? Upon the facts stated, it appears to us that it was not lost and that she was capable of taking it at the time of the descent cast.
Dred Scott v. Sandford, 60 U.S. 393 (1857)
The citizens are the members of the civil society; bound to this society by certain duties, and subject to its authority, they equally participate in its advantages. The natives, or natural-born citizens, are those born in the country, of parents who are citizens. As society cannot perpetuate itself otherwise than by the children of the citizens, those children naturally follow the condition of their parents, and succeed to all their rights.' Again: 'I say, to be of the country, it is necessary to be born of a person who is a citizen; for if he be born there of a foreigner, it will be only the place of his birth, and not his country. . . .
Minor v. Happersett , 88 U.S. 162 (1875)
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. Some authorities go further and include as citizens children born within the jurisdiction without reference to the citizenship of their parents. As to this class there have been doubts, but never as to the first.
United States v. Wong Kim Ark, 169 U.S. 649 (1898)
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.
Perkins v. Elg, 307 U.S. 325 (1939),
Was a decision by the Supreme Court of the United States that a child born in the United States to naturalized parents on U.S. soil is a natural born citizen and that the child's natural born citizenship is not lost if the child is taken to and raised in the country of the parents' origin, provided that upon attaining the age of majority, the child elects to retain U.S. citizenship "and to return to the United States to assume its duties." Not only did the court rule that she did not lose her native born Citizenship but it upheld the lower courts decision that she is a "natural born Citizen of the United States" because she was born in the USA to two naturalized U.S. Citizens.
But the Secretary of State, according to the allegation of the bill of complaint, had refused to issue a passport to Miss Elg 'solely on the ground that she had lost her native born American citizenship.' The court below, properly recognizing the existence of an actual controversy with the defendants [307 U.S. 325, 350] (Aetna Life Ins. Co. v. Haworth, 300 U.S. 227 , 57 S.Ct. 461, 108 A.L.R. 1000), declared Miss Elg 'to be a natural born citizen of the United States' (99 F.2d 414) and we think that the decree should include the Secretary of State as well as the other defendants. The decree in that sense would in no way interfere with the exercise of the Secretary's discretion with respect to the issue of a passport but would simply preclude the denial of a passport on the sole ground that Miss Elg had lost her American citizenship."
The Supreme Court of the United States has never applied the term natural born citizen to any other category than those born in the country of parents who are citizens thereof.
Citizenship Terms Used in the U.S. Constitution - The 5 Terms Defined & Some Legal Reference to Same
"The citizenship of no man could be previous to the declaration of independence, and, as a natural right, belongs to none but those who have been born of citizens since the 4th of July, 1776."....David Ramsay, 1789.
A Dissertation on Manner of Acquiring Character & Privileges of Citizen of U.S.-by David Ramsay-1789
The Law of Nations or the Principles of Natural Law (1758)
The Laws of Nature and of Nature's God: The True Foundation of American Law
The Biggest Cover-up in American History
Mark Levin Attacks Birthers: Admits He Hasn't Studied Issue; Declares Canadian-Born Cruz Eligible
Not much information exists on why the Third Congress (under the lead of James Madison and the approval of George Washington) deleted "natural born" from the Naturalization Act of 1790 when it passed the Naturalization Act of 1795. There is virtually no information on the subject because they probably realized that the First Congress committed errors when it passed the Naturalization Act of 1790 and did not want to create a record of the errors.
It can be reasonably argued that Congress realized that under Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution, Congress is given the power to make uniform laws on naturalization and that this power did not include the power to decide who is included or excluded from being a presidential Article II "natural born Citizen." While Congress has passed throughout United States history many statutes declaring who shall be considered nationals and citizens of the United States at birth and thereby exempting such persons from having to be naturalized under naturalization laws, at no time except by way of the short-lived "natural born" phrase in Naturalization Act of 1790 did it ever declare these persons to be "natural born Citizens."
The uniform definition of "natural born Citizen" was already provided by the law of nations and was already settled. The Framers therefore saw no need nor did they give Congress the power to tinker with that definition. Believing that Congress was highly vulnerable to foreign influence and intrigue, the Framers, who wanted to keep such influence out of the presidency, did not trust Congress when it came to who would be President, and would not have given Congress the power to decide who shall be President by allowing it to define what an Article II "natural born Citizen " is.
Additionally, the 1790 act was a naturalization act. How could a naturalization act make anyone an Article II "natural born Citizen?" After all, a "natural born Citizen" was made by nature at the time of birth and could not be so made by any law of man.
Natural Born Citizen Through the Eyes of Early Congresses
Harvard Law Review Article FAILS to Establish Ted Cruz as Natural Born Citizen
Watch: Mark Levin declares Ted Cruz a "Naturalized Citizen"
Mark Levin Attacks Birthers: Admits He Hasn't Studied Issue; Declares Canadian-Born Cruz Eligible
The settled law of the land is that the US President must be a natural born citizen, and that to be a natural born citizen, you must have been born in the United States to parents both of whom were US citizens when you were born.
You may disagree with the goal of the Constitutional Convention, and/or with the means they chose to achieve it. But it's not a technicality, not an anachronism no longer relevant in modern times, nor is it racist. Especially in modern times, it enables persons of any race or ethnic heritage to become President. And it's what the Constitution requires.
You may also disagree with binding precedent regarding the meaning of "natural born citizen" as established in Minor. But in our system, the Constitution, and the Supreme Court's interpretation of it, are the "supreme law of the land." And if one faction gets to disregard the Constitution and/or the Supreme Court because they disagree, then that sets a precedent where all other factions can do the same.
Donald Trump reminded us that he had standing. When is he going to sue??
“Other suits challenging Cruz’s eligibility have met similar fates in courts in New Hampshire, Arkansas, Alabama”
Pennsylvania as well. And the election boards of 50 states too. But for some that is not enough. Neither would a Supreme Court decision be enough. Not even if the founding fathers spoke from the heavens and declared Cruz an NBC would it be enough. Their minds are closed to reason.
Bookmark
Yep. And it’s what is called a ‘political question’ at this point, and non-justiciable, the court is incapable of making a decision by law or action. The American people are giving judgment.
Of course if Cruz manages to force this to a contested convention, and even more amazing, convinces the RNC that he really is their boy, you can believe the `rats will get the SCOTUS to issue a writ.
People want this citizenship word salad defined, once and for all.
If the citizenship question were clear, it would be painful, but it’s definition and original meaning would not be continuously challenged.
I think after candidates like McCain, Obama and Cruz, and Rubio, are subject to citizenship questions, and the teeth pulling going on to view concealed records, sealed records, delayed release of records, then people naturally want to know what “natural” means.
They don’t need to consider it with Cruz, either, but I wish they would. I’d like it settled until the next court refines it.
They won’t, though. Just about everyone knows that Cruz has lost, so it won’t be an issue in the fall.
Regardless what the USSC decides, IMHO Cruz and ø are both ineligible. But then, I don’t hold to the validity of so-called “homosexual” marriage, nor the Court’s position on abortion either. So it’s not as if it were anything new.
RE: Donald Trump reminded us that he had standing. When is he going to sue??
That will probably his last card if the pesky Cruz continues to prevent him from getting the nomination.
yep
RE: Pennsylvania as well.
Yes, and most recently New Jersey.
See here:
http://www.wnd.com/2016/04/n-j-court-declares-cruz-eligible-for-white-house/
Having read the writings of the founders, I am confident they would not find a Cubanadian to be eligible.
The DEFINITION of natural born citizen lies in E. Vattel’s Law of Nations. The Law of Nations is specifically named in Article I, Section 8, Clause 10:
“To define and punish Piracies and Felonies committed on the high Seas, and Offenses against the Law of Nations.”
Clause 11: To declare War.........
Clause 12: To raise and support Armies.........
Clause 13; To provide and maintain a Navy....................
Clause 14: To make Rules for the Government...............
Obviously the Law of Nations is cited in the Constitution so all the excuses that “Natural born citizen” is not “defined” are erroneous.
ALL the Framers of the Constitution knew and studied the Law of Nations.
British common Law dealt with “SUBJECTS of the KING.”
The new American Republic dealt with CITIZENS, NOT Subjects.
The Law of Nations reads that a ‘Natural Born Citizen” is one who can be nothing other than a Citizen of the land in which he is born, i.e. a native. He is born of BOTH parents citizens and born on the land, i.e. bearing NO allegiance to any other country.
Ted Cruz was born in Canada of “possibly” ONE American Citizen. There is even doubt that his mother was an American at the time of his birth , but it is KNOWN his father was NOT an American citizen. He is NOT qualified!
Could you provide more detail please. I’m not certain I understand your point.
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