You're right on. As Edwards Pierrepont wrote (it would have been in 1875 or 76), Young Steinkauler is a native-born American citizen. There is no law of the United States under which his father or any other person can deprive him of his birthright. He can return to America at the age of twenty-one, and in due time, if the people elect, he can become President of the United States
. I'm quite sure the Court would agree today, if they ever took a case.
One doesn't remove a President from office lightly. To override the decision by the people as accepted by Congress would require an "open/shut" case - and I don't see this as "open/shut".
The Supreme Court would not remove him even if they had an open/shut case. The Constitution requires them to leave the job of removal up to Congress.
Yep. This is lost on so many. Most lay people don't understand that before a court will har a case, the plaintiff must demonstrate to the court that the remedy they are asking for (presuming that they prevail at trial), is actually something the court can provide.
No court can remove a sitting president, even if that president has been installed under fraudulent circumstances. This is why this case will never be heard for this term of Obama's presidency.
But, the court can provide a remedy for questions of ballot access for federal elections. Should Obama be precluded from a state ballot, then there is certainly a remedy the Court can apply, and is one of the reasons the case would be heard.
That' not entirely clear. The Constitution says:
Section. 4. The President, Vice President and all civil Officers of the United States, shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.
So to say the Congress could remove an ineligible occupant of the office, is to say that an ineligible person can, under the Constitution, *be* President. A logical impossibility.
I don't think the framers considered the possibility that an ineligible person would successfully manage to usurp the office of President. Thus they did not provide for the possibility.
If the electors were individually selected, ether directly by the people of the states, or by the legislatures of the states, rather than being appointed by "political parties" (something else the Constitution does not contemplate) and then elected without the people who voted for them even knowing their names, it likely would not have occurred. In fact such was an argument for the system as it existed. The electors would be known to the people who selected them, and they in turn would have more individual knowledge of the potential Presidents.
“The Supreme Court would not remove him even if they had an open/shut case. The Constitution requires them to leave the job of removal up to Congress.”
I don’t know if you were around in the early 70’s, but it was the SCOTUS decision requiring the Nixon White House to release the then-recently revealed tapes that lead to the pressure on Republican Senators to go to Nixon to ask for his resignation in the face of a sure impeachment proceeding.
The SCOTUS decision itself did not bring about the removal of Nixon, but led the Congress to have to deal with it. That SCOTUS decision was the beginning of the end for Nixon.
Similarly, if the SCOTUS ever took an eligibility case and determined that NBC means what many here argue, i.e., that the Framers’ intent in embedding the ‘natural born’ requirement in the Constitution was to assure a POTUS born on US soil AND to two citizen parents, it would not take long for Congress to act. Any such SCOTUS decision would not, itself, remove Obama. It would surely lead to his removal by Congress.