Ted Cruz leading Donald Trump in Iowa, Trump is stirring the pot in regard to the Texas senator’s birthplace.
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DeLay notes that he’d hate to limit it between candidates Cruz and Trump “because Rubio’s still in it and others could rise up”. He had obviously prepared for the subject of his birthplace to come up, and very quickly turned it around on his opponent, Donald Trump, who has been harping on the Cruz birther issue for the past few weeks.
Cruz leads in the polls in Iowa, while Trump holds a lead in national polls and in New Hampshire, which holds its primary on February 9. Nor will Schwarzenegger be the last naturalized citizen who would run if permitted. Most legal scholars admit that the question of whether a person who was born outside of the United States to an American citizen qualifies as a “natural-born citizen”, as defined by the Constitution.
Duggin said that the “consensus rests on firm foundations” based on the intent of the naturalization clause, as stated in a letter in 1787 from John Jay to George Washington; the language of the 1790 Naturalization Act; and the 14-year residency requirement in the Constitution’s Article II.
If Cruz does become the GOP nominee, the issue may end up falling to the Supreme Court.
Tribe argues that an originalist might say “Cruz wouldn’t be eligible because the legal principles that prevailed in the 1780s and 90s required that someone be born on USA soil to be a “natural born” citizen”. Tribe has seized on the birther issue this week, using it as a jumping off point to criticize Cruz’s rigid, originalist interpretation of the Constitution. And having just an American mother, as Cruz did, would clearly have been insufficient at a time that made patrilineal descent decisive.
Faithfully applied, the antiquarian approach to judging championed by Cruz would not only aggravate today’s political gridlock over appointments. Georgetown University law professors Neal Katyal and Paul Clement have written, “All the sources routinely used to interpret the Constitution confirm that the phrase “natural born citizen” has a specific meaning: namely, someone who was a US citizen at birth with no need to go through a naturalization proceeding at some later time”.
The Congressional Research Service released a report in 2011 on the qualifications for president, focusing on the issue of natural born citizenship, and ultimately concluded that natural born citizenship means you’re a citizen at birth – not that the country of birth is as crucial. Under Canadian law, his place of birth made him a citizen of Canada. He then suggested that Cruz would benefit from a legal ruling on the birthplace question before the general election campaign. “Thus, an individual born to a US citizen parent – whether in California or Canada or the Canal Zone – is a USA citizen from birth and is fully eligible to serve as President if the people so choose”.
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To the editor: A child born overseas to one parent who is a US citizen and one alien parent – as Sen. “We have had some previous cases of it, but I don’t think we’ve ever gone through the court system for the Supreme Court to decide one way or another”, Paul said.
