Personally I would agree that “natural born” should mean born on American soil (including embassies, military bases and possessions).
It would be most helpful, I think, if the SCOTUS would take the time to clarify this point of law.
I just don’t agree with critical thinker’s thought. A child can be a citizen or not; a citizen can be natural born or not. There’s no provision for notifying “the US” (who would that be, the President? Secretary of State?) that “my kid was just born so make a note he’s natural born”. The premise of his/her analysis is that someone who doesn’t have to be naturalized is natural born. He may be right; I’m not sure. But it sure as hell isn’t self evident.
It would be fitting if this arrogant anti-immigration fanatic was found not to be eligible for the Presidency because of his immigration status.
What was the point of your original comment? It was:
Blackstone has been used numerous times in the courts to determine definition and intent of the framers.
My original comment said that citing “centuries old English law” to decide this question was misguided. Something Justice Thomas would do. It wasn’t that we should not use it at all. It should be used with other things to determine what the law means in the U.S. today.
You said Blackstone has been used to decide legal questions. Okay. So? As I said, using him alone doesn’t do much to advance answering legal questions in another country and century. I hold to the comment and it is a sound addendum to your own even if you were merely stating a fact and both comments can stand side by side. Red flag. Ruling on field overturned.
Cool. 
And I, a random internet person, also agree. Once a controlling legal authority eventually takes this up, I’m sure they’ll decide in Cruz’s favor (which would also be in imaginary-Kenyan-Obama’s favor, which will be another reason for the base to burn Roberts in effigy, which is always fun).
And I DO look forward to it getting resolved. I ain’t David Bowie, but I can spot a trend. This nonsense has been swirling around McCain, Obama (without basis in reality), Cruz, and now even Rubio. This needs to end. As far as I can tell, the broadest definition of “natural-born” that Scalia would vote for would be whatever supported a candidate he already likes, legal arguments be damned. So the best chance of having it end on the side of decency is here right now and if that proves to be a distraction to Ted Cruz, then ROFLMAO.
Some things are in effect decided by parties other than the Supreme Court.
Each time a state electoral official accepts Cruz’s name on the ballot for President, officials who swear or affirm to follow the U.S. Constitution, they are deciding the question. It is unlikely this will reach the Supreme Court. And, the debate will continue even after the Supreme Court decides. Everyone didn’t suddenly think Bush was legitimately President in 2000 because Bush v. Gore settled a major point 5-4.
The sort of people fascinated about these things are the same sorts in various cases who think Roe v. Wade be damned that abortion is murder, but the government is illegitimately allowing it. What some justices think won’t settle it for them.
Cruz is the Cohiba Candidate… from Cuba, you can buy 'em in Canada, you’re really not supposed to bring 'em in into the U.S, but everybody at Goldman Sachs has 'em in their coat pocket.
One wonders if Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts is mouthing under his breath "Holy fuckin’ shit, we might have to hear these cases!"
Fair enough. How about my friend whose father was on a job in Canada when she was born? The family moved back when she was just a few months old and she’s been here ever since. In her case, I think it’s safe to say she’s never running for president (head of her dept at a major university is hard enough), but the point is the same.
The law professor would argue that foreign born is foreign born, so too bad for your friend! Cruz, of course is a triple threat: born in Canada, his father is Cuban, and his mother - while claiming to be a U.S. citizen - is clearly registered on Canadian-citizen voting rosters. He’s about as “Texan” as George W. Bush… all hat, no horses
Bear in mind that the bit about timely notification is from the commenter I was replying to, which is why I said “you describe a situtation in which…”, but a correction is welcome anyway.
The commenter was telling us that it was pretty evident that Cruz was a natural born citizen of the US. I was pointing out that the situation described didn’t make it so self-evident - to me, at least.
Your comment provides yet another example where the citizenship status of a newborn is discussed in clear terms while the term “natural born” is not mentioned at all.
I think everyone is my age and born before 1952, my lord these guys are mere puppies.
The definition I was taught in school was that you had to be born in the US to two citizen parents. Obviously that definition would make some presidents (including Obama) ineligible. I could believe that the intended definition was any of the theories - two citizen parents and born in the US, one citizen parent and born in the US, or just being a citizen at birth. Personally, I think the first two are overly restrictive and outdated. Ideally, the Constitution should be amended to clarify it to mean citizen at birth and we can stop dealing with this nonsense.
It is settled law, and that is why it is not a news story. I don’t see it anywhere on nbc, cnn, or fox right now. It is only a story in the echo chamber. It is every bit as much of a story as the Obama birther movement. To be mocked and ridiculed, not given any credence.
The key part you are missing is in this attempt to separate constitutional law from statutory law, which is not a valid way of looking at it. No where in the Constitution does it define what natural born means. For over 50 years by the time the Constitution was written, common law stated that natural born was defined by citizenship of parents, not by location. So we either need to look at what the English common law said and assume that is what the founders meant, or we need to look to statutory law to clear up ambiguity in the Constitution. Which is what the Congress did in 1795, which has been upheld by Congress repeatedly. So this separation of statutory law from constitutional law is entirely artificial and wouldn’t hold up in court. If Congress passed a law tomorrow that said “The term Natural Born Citizen is applied to anyone born to one or more American parents regardless of location of birth”, that would be a statutory law, and completely Constitutional.
I’m sorry, but you are in the fringe on this one. We are all there occasionally.
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Why? Aren’t you punishing Americans who go work overseas by doing that? And punishing their children? This would also affect the huge number of military families that live off base in the more friendly countries. What happens if a kid of an American soldier is accidentally born at home? Or in traffic on the way to the base? Sorry, you missed it by 250 feet. If only you could have held it in another 90 seconds. What makes a kid born on this soil any better than a kid born to Americans somewhere else?
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The truly sad thing is none of this STUPID debate has anything to do with whether or not Cruz actually deserves to be elected president.
Really, we here in America are going to be so foolish and so petty as to think it makes a damned bit of difference whether undeniably American citizen Ted Cruz is eligible or ineligible to be president based solely on the precise geographic location he exited his mother’s womb?
‘Natural born’ = born with at least one American citizen parent, thus conferring automatic citizenship with no need of subsequent registration or naturalization papers. End of story. Anything else is sophistry.
Now can we stop indulging Donald Trump’s racist trolling and get back to noting all of the rational reasons Ted Cruz would be a terrible president?
When the Constitution was written, travel was difficult and people did not move around a lot. So it seems reasonable to believe that the fact of being born within a territory or not would not have been a reasonable criterion. Parents of people in the elites do sometimes work overseas, and do have kids there. It would have seemed silly to the Founders, one could argue, to have made the accident of birth location dispositive.
But the trouble with that argument, even for a “Living Constitution” interpreter, is that many people actually do retain a special feeling about their birthplace. And to that extent, they have something akin to a conflict of interest if, as President, chief executive and head of state, they have dealings with that country, its allies or, for that matter, its enemies. The Founders were worldly and realistic people, and it’s entirely reasonable to suppose that they actually meant what they said, relying on the meaning of words in the common law of England and on common sense, too.
Yet it is not at all misguided, since English Common Law and definitions such as Blackstone are indeed often very important and used by the SCOTUS (as well as lower level courts) to understand the definition of terms and concepts within not only the Constitution, but even statuary law when they are not spelled out within the laws themselves.
The point being that to claim that Blackstone has not, cannot, or should not, be used by the courts simply doesn’t match reality.
Here’s another legal argument about what “natural-born” meant – http://blogs.gonzaga.edu/gulawreview/files/2011/01/Lohman1.pdf. I don’t think it’s as persuasive on what the common law was at the time the Constitution was adopted.
That’s pretty much the crux of the problem. If the Framers thought the term “natural born” was important, why did they not define it? If anything, history shows that it wasn’t quite settled even back then.
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