Posted on 01/09/2016 12:13:42 AM PST by Cincinatus' Wife
Unless he himself becomes president, Donald Trump should serve in the next administration as Special Envoy for Getting People to Dig Up Birth Certificates for Public Consumption, because he's hella good at it. His speculation about Obama's birthplace prompted the President to release his long-form birth certificate in 2011. And now, after only a few days of muttering about Cruz's eligibility to become president, he's prompted Cruz to release… his mother's?
Wait, it makes sense.
As best we can tell there are two main strands of Cruz birtherism. One is that the Supreme Court has never directly ruled on the meaning of the Constitution's "natural born citizen" requirement. Even though it is understood by experts to mean "U.S. citizen at birth," as Cruz was, some opportunistic critics, such as Trump, have been warning about the phrase's not-totally-determined meaning and how that could open the door to distracting legal cases if Cruz becomes the nominee.
The other is that maybe Cruz was not a U.S. citizen at birth, because his mother did not meet the requirements for transmitting citizenship to her child. As we wrote yesterday, "Those born abroad between 1952 and 1986 earned U.S. citizenship at birth if their parents were married and one parent was a U.S. citizen who spent 10 years in the United States with five of those coming after age 14. Cruz's parents were married, and his mother meets the citizenship requirements." This gives Cruz birthers another person's life to inspect: that of Eleanor Cruz, the senator's mother. Democratic congressman Alan Grayson (yes, there are Democratic Cruz birthers) has said that the eligibility suit he's supposedly prepping against Cruz would focus on Eleanor. As U.S. News reported this week:.....
(Excerpt) Read more at slate.com ...
Does anyone really believe the founders would consider say an anchor baby with Chinese parents a natural born citizen that would be eligible to serve as POTUS? What about the children of all the trophy wives living in the middle east or Russia are those all natural born citizens and also eligible to serve as POTUS?
Some adult female gets infatuated with say an ISIS fighter and goes to Syria, gets knocked up and has a child. That child lives with his dad until he is an adult then the child comes to the USA and that child is a NBC and can run for president? This scenario is exactly why the founders put the NBC clause into the Constitution. Void it and you or your children will regret it.
Especially not appellate law, which is outcome-based, not precedent based. The judge picks the outcome he wants, then carfts an argument (often misapplying precedent by cherry-picking) that reaches the desired outcome.
At the SCOTUS level, law is almost purely a political activity, due to corruption of the function over the past 4 or 5 generations.
Trial courts are just as bad, party out of pure incompetence, and partly out of the fact that erroneous trial decisions are expensive to appeal, and the trial judges know it. IOW, they know they are free to make mistakes, even deliberate ones, and the only consequence is being reversed.
You nailed it.
Great description of the real state of jurisprudence.
Truth, justice and the American Way—modern justice has little or none of any of them.
If Cruz isn’t President this time next year it won’t be because of the Supreme Court.
It can be reasonably argued that Congress realized that under Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution, Congress is given the power to make uniform laws on naturalization and that this power did not include the power to decide who is included or excluded from being a presidential Article II "natural born Citizen." While Congress has passed throughout United States history many statutes declaring who shall be considered nationals and citizens of the United States at birth and thereby exempting such persons from having to be naturalized under naturalization laws, at no time except by way of the short-lived "natural born" phrase in Naturalization Act of 1790 did it ever declare these persons to be "natural born Citizens."
The uniform definition of "natural born Citizen" was already provided by the law of nations and was already settled. The Framers therefore saw no need nor did they give Congress the power to tinker with that definition. Believing that Congress was highly vulnerable to foreign influence and intrigue, the Framers, who wanted to keep such influence out of the presidency, did not trust Congress when it came to who would be President, and would not have given Congress the power to decide who shall be President by allowing it to define what an Article II "natural born Citizen" is.
Additionally, the 1790 act was a naturalization act. How could a naturalization act make anyone an Article II "natural born Citizen?" After all, a "natural born Citizen" was made by nature at the time of birth and could not be so made by any law of man.
Statutory and naturalized are two terms with different meanings. Both natural born and naturalized are citizenship defined by statutes made laws by congress. The law in 1970 will apply in this case.
Did you read the case?
I'll just leave that there.
I suspect you are firmly attached to that notion, and have a variety of rhetorical argument to sustain the position, such as "Congress has the power to make rules of naturalization, which includes the power to define what is not naturalization." I don;t think a discussion on the subject has any point. you've stated your conclusion, and that's that. Anybody who finds differently is just wrong, and that's that, too.
That's the condition of the argument, and it will never be resolved, except by consensus, which, as we know, is always right.
Statutory law or statute law is written law set down by a body of legislature as opposed to common law. Natural born and naturalized are legal terms defined by statute or statutory law to determine citizenship. The particular case doesn’t matter.
Just out of curiosity what was that law when Donald Trump was born ?
Could be that Trump threw the birth certificate issue out there to give Cruz an opportunity to clear the fog early. Now he (Trump) has no obstacle in having Cruz as his running mate. It’ll save Trump time in the end.
There is a body of common law on citizenship, that stands separate from statutory citizenship law.
The reason I asked if you read the case, is that the case says that a person who is born a citizen, where citizenship depends on a statute, is naturalized, even though that person has no need to go through a naturalization procedure. that what the case lays out as principles of law, in those terms.
I assume you disagree with the court, which is fine. The court may well disagree with itself if it decided the same case next week. The court picks outcomes depending on the parties and outcome, not on the law.
Pay attention. Only one parent has to be a natural-born citizen.
Wow that is a seriously unbiased headline, isn’t it?/s
What was the law at the time of Donald Trump’s birth ?
Wasn’t it not to long ago perhaps even before Ted Cruz entered the race that this same discussion was on FR and Jim Robinson said him self that Ted Cruz was eligible ?
Incorrect. Neither parent needs to be a natural born Citizen. Both parents Do need to be citizens of any type (including naturalized).
The Supreme Court of the United States has never applied the term “natural born citizen” to any other category than “those born in the country of parents who are citizens thereof”.
The Harvard Law Review Article Taken Apart Piece by Piece and Utterly Destroyed
Citizenship Terms Used in the U.S. Constitution - The 5 Terms Defined & Some Legal Reference to Same
"The citizenship of no man could be previous to the declaration of independence, and, as a natural right, belongs to none but those who have been born of citizens since the 4th of July, 1776."....David Ramsay, 1789.
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