Posted on 02/09/2016 6:22:54 AM PST by Behind the Blue Wall
The words natural born citizen, and their original meaning at the time that this constitutional clause was crafted, go a long way to answering this question. In founding-era America, like today, a person could be a citizen by virtue of birth on American territory; a citizen by virtue of a statute that granted citizenship to him at birth; a "naturalized" citizen, meaning one who entered the country as an alien but later obtained citizenship via a process determined by law; and a foreigner.
A natural born citizen cannot be a foreigner. Foreigners are not citizens. A natural born citizen cannot be a person who was naturalized. Those people are not born citizens; they're born aliens. Most important for the purposes of the Cruz question, a natural born citizen cannot be someone whose birth entitled him to citizenship because of a statute—in this case a statute that confers citizenship on a person born abroad to an American parent. In the 18th century, as now, the word natural meant "in the regular course of things." Then, as now, almost all Americans obtained citizenship by birth in this country, not by birth to Americans abroad. The natural way to obtain citizenship, then, was (and is) by being born in this country. Because Cruz was not "natural born" -- not born in the United States -- he is ineligible for the presidency, under the most plausible interpretation of the Constitution.
(Excerpt) Read more at slate.com ...
I guess college professors trump judges?
Freepers posting garbage from a far left crap rag to disoarage the one true conservative in the race, go figure.
one more opinion
Except the Illinois courts ruled otherwise.
Slate snicker
It’s always amusing when leftist, “living ‘constitution’” college professors suddenly, conveniently become originalists.
Oh, well if Slate says it then you know it must be true! (Snicker)
So, you wrote this article? Why are you on this board?
I attended college at the Universityof Chicago. I took “Soviet Domestic Policy” with Cynthia Kaplan. Her biggest problem with the Communist Party was that there were too many men in it. To the university’s credit (and I am not quick to give it), she did NOT get tenure.
By Eric Posner.
Not you.
Oops. You list yourself as the author, but I see the actual author is Eric Posner. Still, Slate does not garner respect here.
Yikes, sorry.
This is not a one sided thing Cruz supporters dig up all sorts of liberal rags and worse yet blogs. So both sides have issue here. My concern is why won’t Cruz just unseal his Consular Report of Birth and end this whole issue?
I didn’t know Chicago had any “professors”. Especially “law professors”.
Birthers!!
If Obama can be president then so can Cruz. Not that I buy anything this egghead prof has to say on the subject.
Why, here I have heard it cried out over and over...” Follow the ‘original intent’ of the Constitution... Was that just a slogan?
Who teaches judges the ‘law’?
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