You mean Gore vs Bush?
What I find fascinating is the position Cruzâs supporters are taking for his eligibility is, his mother is an American citizen but based on common law at the time of founding of the US, women had no rights so only the parentage of his father would have counted.
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Let me guess; Professor McManamo is an âoriginalist.â She believes that the Constitution could not possibly be changed after its enactment. She is dead wrong. Why else would the Founders have allowed for amendments? This is a bogus lawsuit, and the only reason I find it hard to type is that I find myself defending the indefensible Ted Cruz. News flash, professor; we donât live under 17th century English common law.
Itâs nice to see right wing cranks and yahoos taking down one of their own!
How can someone as clearly troubled and obsessed with morality, and âtraditional marriageâ NOT be a closeted homosexual. I have always imagined Cruz was just that.
Not in the legal sense.
Wiki provides a primer:
In the typical case where there is a finding of nonjusticiability due to the political question doctrine, the issue presented before the court is usually so specific that the Constitution gives all power to one of the coordinate political branches, or at the opposite end of the spectrum, the issue presented is so vague that the United States Constitution does not even consider it. A court can only decide issues based on law. The Constitution dictates the different legal responsibilities of each respective branch of government. If there is an issue where the court does not have the Constitution as a guide, there are no legal criteria to use. When there are no specific constitutional duties involved, the issue is to be decided through the democratic process. The court will not engage in political disputes.
Determining what a particular legal term meant when employed in the Constitution is something the Justices do every day.
Iâm like everybody else and assumed that I more or less knew the meaning of the term ânatural bornâ âthat it meant that if you were a citizen at birth, you were a ânatural bornâ citizen. But after reading Professor Mcmanamonâs rendition of the surrounding history I am convinced that the Framerâs were using the legal definition of ânatural bornâ as found in Blackstone â you are natural born if you are born in a place under the control of your country. Anybody else â including the child born abroad to two citizens â had to be naturalized. That Congress enacted a statute providing that such children were to be considered as natural born does not change the meaning of natural born as used in the Constitution. In the first place, if the term ânatural bornâ did include such children, passing such a statute would be totally nugatory:everybody would already understand that they were already citizens â natural born citizens at that. In the second, even if we grant the rather lame argument that we are supposed to ignore the title of that act which denominated it as an act of naturalization because in England titles were supplied by printers and not voted on, the fact is that the only power Congress could be acting under was their power to establish an uniform act of naturalization. And if you need a statute to be naturalized, you are not natural born.
Further, even if you discard the above arguments, although Congress did use the term ânatural bornâ in that first act this is no help to Cruz now since in subsequent versions of this act children born abroad to citizen parents are simply termed citizens.
And fundamentally, the Constitution cannot be amended by acts of Congress.
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Blackstone, 1765
âBut by several more modern statutes these restrictions are still farther taken off: so that all children, born out of the kingâs ligeance, whose fathers were natural-born subjects, are now natural-born subjects themselves, to all intents and purposes, without any exception; unless their said fathers were attainted, or banished beyond sea, for high treason; or were then in the service of a prince at enmity with Great Britain.â
http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/a1_8_4_citizenships1.html
This references the British Nationality Act, 1730.
"That all Children born out of the Ligeance of the Crown of England, or of Great Britain, or which shall hereafter be born out of such Ligeance, whose Fathers were or shall be natural-born Subjects of the Crown of England, or of Great Britain, at the Time of the Birth of such Children respectively, shall and may, by virtue of the said recited Clause in the said Act of the seventh Year of the Reign of her said late Majesty, and of this present
7 Ann. c. 5. s. 3.
Act, be adjudged and taken to be, and all such Children are hereby declared to be natural-born Subjects of the Crown of Great Britain, to all Intents, Constructions and Purposes whatsoever."
http://www.uniset.ca/naty/BNA1730.htm
I read this to mean both British law and Blackstone conveyed natural citizenship to children born outside Britain. Is that incorrect?
Equating birtherism to the current challenges to Cruzâs eligibility is like equating the Sovereign Citizens concept of titling to standard property law. There is an order of magnitude difference. Lawrence Tribe is not a right wing nut job.
Standing is more complicated. You are correct as to ordinary citizens but it may well be possible for standing to be obtained See Professor Jack Balkinâs.Can the federal courts decide Ted Cruzâs eligibility? No problem.
That blog is also a good source of varied legal opinion on the matter.
I read that to mean that the British statute conveyed that status by means of statute to children born outside Britain and that while Blackstone acknowledges this, that this does not change the meaning of natural born.
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The question of the meaning of ânatural bornâ may indeed have been previously adjudicated. But not with the outcome you expect:
Tuesday, January 19, 2016
Is Ted Cruz a naturalized citizen?
John Mikhail
http://balkin.blogspot.com/2016/01/is-ted-cruz-naturalized-citizen.html
I am puzzled by the fact that some commentators seem to think that Rogers v. Bellei (1971) is not a problem for Ted Cruz. It seems to me to be a significant problem for him.
In Bellei, the Supreme Court heldâor at least clearly affirmedâthat a US citizen in Cruzâs precise circumstances (foreign birth, American mother, alien father) was a naturalized citizen. The Court divided, 5-4, on whether the plaintiff was naturalized âin the United Statesâ or overseas, but all nine Justices agreed that he was naturalized.
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While I see your point, I interpret this differently. If a baby is deemed a natural born citizen âat the time of birth,â then the child is born a natural born citizen. If the father owes his allegiance to the king, so does his child.
In any event, it makes for an interesting discussion.
The CZ was NOT US soil at the time. Also there is the possibility that little Johnny III was born in Panama proper.
Doesnât matter: heâs a NBC for Article One purposes.
So is Cruz.
As far as this suit, itâs just right-wing bullshit and will be thrown out for lack of standing.
Next he will lecture us about the chemtrails.
Anyone who would think that the child of military member/s stationed overseas would not be eligible to be President is an asshole.
There are only two types of citizens: natural-born and naturalized. Cruz is natural born and eligible-unless the owners of the repig party order their five slavering idiots on the Supreme Court to âruleâ otherwise. That would create a third type of citizen.
Document 1
William Blackstone, Commentaries 1:354, 357â58, 361â62
1765
The first and most obvious division of the people is into aliens and natural-born subjects. Natural-born subjects are such as are born within the dominions of the crown of England, that is, within the ligeance, or as it is generally called, the allegiance of the king; and aliens, such as are born out of it. Allegiance is the tie, or ligamen, which binds the subject to the king, in return for that protection which the king affords the subject. The thing itself, or substantial part of it, is founded in reason and the nature of government; the name and the form are derived to us from our Gothic ancestors.
. . . . .
Allegiance, both express and implied, is however distinguished by the law into two sorts or species, the one natural, the other local; the former being also perpetual, the latter temporary. Natural allegiance is such as is due from all men born within the kingâs dominions immediately upon their birth. For, immediately upon their birth, they are under the kingâs protection; at a time too, when (during their infancy) they are incapable of protecting themselves. Natural allegiance is therefore a debt of gratitude; which cannot be forfeited, cancelled, or altered, by any change of time, place, or circumstance, nor by any thing but the united concurrence of the legislature. An Englishman who removes to France, or to China, owes the same allegiance to the king of England there as at home, and twenty years hence as well as now. For it is a principle of universal law, that the natural-born subject of one prince cannot by any act of his own, no, not by swearing allegiance to another, put off or discharge his natural allegiance to the former: for this natural allegiance was intrinsic, and primitive, and antecedent to the other; and cannot be devested without the concurrent act of that prince to whom it was first due.
http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/a1_8_4_citizenships1.html
This is an earlier portion of Blackstoneâs discussion of the meaning of the term natural born.
And further, back to one of my original arguments, if the Framers had intended to incorporate the British statutes into their meaning of the term natural born, that first act of naturalization would have been totally unnecessary.
Compare that to Blackstone on the child born in England to French parents, Clearly by all holdings those parents owe their allegiance to the French king but Blackstone holds that that child is a natural born English citizen. So the meaning of natural born canât turn on who the father owes his allegiance to.
The children of aliens, born here in England, are, generally speaking, natural-born subjects, and entitled to all the privileges of such. In which the constitution of France differs from ours; for there, by their jus albinatus, if a child be born of foreign parents, it is an alien
http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/a1_8_4_citizenships1.html
It gets intricate.