The Post & Email’s exclusive interview with Eligibility Attorney Mario Apuzzo

...I heard you on Dr. Kate’s radio program the other night, and it caught my attention when you said that you believe that your case will end up at the Supreme Court despite the fact that the Third Circuit is scheduled to hear your appeal. Could you expound on that?...Yes. If the Third Circuit affirms the District Court’s decision to dismiss the case for lack of standing and political question, then the Kerchner plaintiffs will file a Writ of Certiorari with the U.S. Supreme Court. It does not mean that the court will necessarily hear the case because you’re essentially requesting that the Supreme Court review the lower court’s decision. So you don’t have a right to go to the Supreme Court; you have a right to ask that the Supreme Court take the case. So when we talk about going to the Supreme Court, we mean that we are asking the Supreme Court to take the case. If four justices vote to accept the petition for Certiorari, then it’s actually on appeal in the U.S. Supreme Court, and then we would need a majority of the court to actually grant the petition. If they grant the petition, you don’t necessarily win the case, because at that point the only issue that’s on appeal is whether or not the District Court is correct in dismissing the case for lack of standing and for political question...

*snip*

“MRS. RONDEAU: I had no idea it could be that lengthy. When was the last time that the Supreme Court or any court, to your knowledge, defined “natural born Citizen”?

ATTY. APUZZO: First of all, there was never a case in the U.S. Supreme Court which decided, in the context of questioning if a person is eligible to be president, whether or not that person is a natural born Citizen. It has never happened. That means that there was never an election-type contest case involving the President of the United States, which question involved whether or not he or she was a natural born Citizen.

There’s never been a case like that, which is very important to understand, because that tells us that we really don’t know what the Supreme Court would rule on the question of whether or not a person is a natural born Citizen within the context of a presidential election contest.

There have been cases where the Supreme Court was asked to define citizenship.

We hear of the famous Wong Kim Ark case of 1898. The reason why I point to that case right now is that the Obama supporters, or enablers, depending on how motivated they are, point to that case as being the definitive answer from the Supreme Court as to what a “natural born Citizen” is, which is totally incorrect, because #1, that case is not about defining presidential eligibility, and #2, the case dealt only with a “born” “citizen of the United States” under the 14th Amendment.

A “citizen of the United States” is one thing; a “natural born Citizen” is another. It’s two different things.

It’s very simple to see that if you look at Article II, Section 1, clause 5, which is the Eligibility Clause. Right there, it has both standards: “at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution” relates to a citizen of the United States.

But after the adoption of the Constitution, you have to be a “natural born Citizen,” so it tells you right there just by a very simple common-sense reading of the Article that it’s two different things. It can’t be the same thing or the Framers wouldn’t have written it that way.

We talk about the first part, “a Citizen of the United States,” as the “grandfather clause” because at that time, you had different people here. You had no one who had been born in the United States yet. There was the Revolution in 1776, then the Founding Fathers who were all born British subjects before the Declaration of Independence. I think we’re all familiar with this history.

But the point is that they really were not natural born Citizens, so they said, “OK, fine, we’re not ‘natural born Citizens’; we’re definitely Citizens of the United States” because they had either been born in the Colonies or the States or they had immigrated to the Colonies or the States.

But here’s the important point:

they adhered to the Revolution; that’s what made them a “Citizen of the United States.” Just like a naturalized Citizen when you swear an oath: you go through a process, which is almost like going through a revolution, and then you swear an oath and you become a Citizen.

We don’t go through revolutions today to prove that we’re a Citizen; but if you’re not born here, you do have to swear an oath.

So that tells you right there than Wong Kim Ark really is not defining a natural born Citizen in the context of a presidential election.

However, what’s important about Wong Kim Ark is that it did recognize that there is a “natural born Citizen,” and it confirmed the definition of that particular clause because it cites the case of Minor v. Happersett, which case defines clearly what a natural born Citizen is, although it doesn’t tell us, again, in the presidential context.

We call it dicta, when the court says something that is not part of the actual decision, so it’s just giving you an extra comment.

However, it is important because we’re trying to piece together what the intent of the Founders was, so you look for anything that you can which does that, and Wong Kim Ark affirmed that part of the definition. It also recognized that there’s a difference between a “citizen of the United States” and a “natural born Citizen” because the court says that a citizen has just as many rights as a natural born Citizen, so clearly, it’s recognizing that there are two different things.

So again, the Supreme Court has never issued a decision on this in a presidential context, but we do have these cases which touch upon the definition of it.

There are also more cases which address that particular issue.

If we go back to the Venus case, which is one of the earliest cases, heard by Chief Justice John Marshall back in 1814, he was concurring and dissenting for other reasons, and then he told us what a “natural born Citizen” is. He doesn’t use that language; he uses the old language which was used to translate Vattel. He talks about the “indigenous,” the “natives” or “indigenous,” but it’s the same concept, the same definition.

So that goes back as far as 1814, and Justice Marshall was one of the Founders.

So it’s not a clear-cut thing where you’re going to find a case which says, “Oh, here, to be president, here’s what you have to have.”

But there’s enough evidence there, and I have a tremendous amount of evidence that I’ve put together, and I’m giving you a summary here.”

http://www.thepostemail.com/2010/06/09/the-post-emails-exclusive-interview-with-eligibility-attorney-mario-apuzzo/

The definition of “particularized injury” (narrow or broad) seems to be the point on which Apuzzo is most vulnerable:

MRS. RONDEAU: That being said, why do you think the lower court dismissed your suit?

ATTY. APUZZO: They said that we have a general grievance about government. Essentially, they used language from other cases which talked about people complaining that some regulatory agency wasn’t protecting the environment, wasn’t doing something, and that people are just complaining in a general sense that the law is not being respected. And the court says, “Well, who are you? We have this environmental problem going on in California, for example, and you live in New Jersey. What’s it to you?” I am just giving you an idea of this. So basically, the court says, “Well, the injury that you’re talking about is a general grievance, and everybody in the whole country has the same grievance if he’s not qualified. You don’t show me that you have a specific injury, a particularized injury that applies to you, so therefore, I’m dismissing this case because it’s as if the whole country came to court and everyone is complaining about this. That’s not for us; that’s for the Congress and for the Executive to deal with.”

This is totally inapplicable in our case because we’re talking about a constitutional standard which is well-defined within the Constitution itself. There’s a lot of argument as to what it means, but the court is well-equipped to finally tell us what it means, so they can make that decision. So again, not everybody sees himself as injured by Mr. Obama; you still have “X” amount of people who still support him. And even if you prove to these people that he’s not qualified to be president, they would vote for him again, because they have a different value.

If this treatise has already been discussed, please don't throw daggers.

I have been studying Prentiss Webster's treatise on citizenship(1891). In addition to his very intense discourse on the origins of citizenship, it also contains all the treaties between nations on citizenship from the revolution through the passing of the Expatriation Act. It is from the study of these treaties that I come with these questions that I believe are at the core of the illegality of the rulings of the WKA case as well as lower court rulings in favor of the feudal definition of citizenship.

Did the founding fathers use/hoodwink the French in helping them to gain freedom from England in order to force citizenship of every child born to a Frenchman on US soil; which would have been in complete disregard of the French laws and International laws they swore to abide by for the help & support of France? IOW, would the French have helped if they knew that the goal of the founders was to create their very own monarchial government in which the soil of the government, not the natural rights of men was the underlying cause of the revolution?

Does the US Constitution grant any court in the US, whether it be municipal, state, federal or supreme, the authority to supersede a treaty between nations or a subsequent act of congress pertaining to a treaty without wholly deeming that treaty to be unconstitutional and therefore declaring that the treaty holds no weight of law?

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