...as long as he doesn't have to make rulings about natural born citizen issues.
“as long as he doesn’t have to make rulings about natural born citizen issues”
Been debated to death. Guaranteed Cruz is more of a constitutional conservative, and originalist than 99.9% of any potential candidate.
Personally I’m convinced that the vast majority of the founders would have considered Cruz a naturally born citizen of the US if they were alive today.
Their opinions were derived from the Law of Nations, rather than British common law. (We never had “subjects” or “nobles” here, just citizens, immigrants, and slaves.) At the time, the idea of people not having roots, renting and moving around the globe was pretty much unthinkable.
The point of natural born citizenship, which was not defined in the Constitution (but the document does refer to Law of Nations), was that free people have citizenship by default. It would have been simpler to say children born outside the jurisdiction of the US could not be president. And children born to non-citizen parents could not be president. However, they were more precise BECAUSE in some cases children can be born abroad and be natural born citizens. And BECAUSE some children born in US jurisdiction are NOT citizens of the US at birth (i.e. natural born citizens). It is for that reason, and that reason alone, that they used natural citizenship at birth as a criterion for presidential eligibility. It was never some racial purity test as some people on this forum make it out to be.
It is government that does not have power by default. If free people are expected to submit and yield rights to a national government, then their right to the privileges of citizenship is naturally derived through their parent (not place of birth). Place of birth was a secondary consideration since ordinarily children were born where their parents were citizens.
There were only two categories of citizenship contemplated in the Constitution - natural born and conferred through a lawful process of immigration, based on laws and treaties. Speculations about some sort of purity tests by which place of birth, and mother versus father citizenship are foolish. That is not what the founders intended.
Bottom line - a person who is born a citizen of the US today (or in Cruz’s and Obama’s lifetime) are natural born citizens, regardless of whether the place of their birth or the citizenship of their parents makes them also a citizen of another nation. Citizenship and laws of another nation do not dictate our laws. Some other nation can grant citizenship to US citizens based on ethnic factors, just as Israel does today. This does not prevent Jews who are citizens at birth from being natural born citizens.
Cruz was a US citizen at birth because, as required by US law at the time, he had at least one citizen parent. Being born abroad did not change this. He did not need to immigrate here to become a citizen. As a citizen at birth, he is a natural born one. It would not matter if he was a natural born citizen of Cuba AND Canada (based on their laws) as well. Canada and Cuba laws have no bearing on our laws any more than our laws our subject to Sharia law. The only exception would be if a properly ratified treaty said so. But no law or treaty prohibited Cruz from being a citizen at birth. In fact, the laws made him such.
Natural born citizen = citizen at birth.
It’s too bad that some people dissect the Constitution for hermeneutics and throw out the underlying principles of liberty like the natural law that dictate citizenship.