TJ is entitled to his opinion but US law only recognizes 2 categories of citizens, natural born and naturalized. This idea of other types of citizens is all conjecture.
You know, after 5 years of discussion of this issue on FR, it is astonishing the number of people who continue to post, “natural born citizenship requires two citizen parents born on US soil” as if it is specifically so stated in the Constitution.
Three questions or comments for them:
1. Do we really want the Courts to arrogate themselves the power to override an election? Aren’t they overly powerful already? Which clause of the Constitution gives the Supremes the power to depose an elected President?
2. If BO were declared ineligible tomorrow by the Supremes, and he stepped down (questionable), he would be replaced, presumably, by Mr. Biden. Is this supposed to be some huge improvement?
3. There is no provision in the Constitution for a mechanism by which a candidate certifies his eligibility. It seems obvious to me that this is because the Founders left such certification up to the Electoral College, which was intended to actually elect the President. As we all know, it almost instantly lost any such actual role, and became a rubber stamp for individual voters, with minor exceptions such as SC pre-war.
So by default the job of ensuring only eligible candidates are elected descends to the voters as a group. If they don’t care enough about the Constitution to enforce it by refusing to vote for an ineligible candidate, the Constitution provides no cure.
Not true. Mr. McCann's essay is solidly based on both American and British law. The British law is a necessary component of his essay because it was the foundation of our laws and our Constitution.
If you follow the thread of "natural-born", it will take you back to British law and their concept of "natural law" which, ultimately, comes from Aristotle's definition of "natural law". Mr. McCann included the various types of citizens because, within the terms used in British law, citizen and subject appear and have specific meaning. In order to provide a clear and unambiguous definition of "natural-born citizen", Mr. McCann had to include those British terms because those are the laws that the Founders would have been most familiar with and on which they based severl concepts in the Constitution.
So, your claim that it is mere conjecture is incorrect. You wiull also note that, at the end of the essay, he cites several legal cases, including SCOTUS cases, that incorporate or further define the terms "citizen", "subject" and "natural-born".