LF: Lawyers say Canadian-born Cruz eligible to run for president

Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, speaks at the International Association of Firefighters (IAFF) Legislative Conference and Presidential Forum in Washington.

While questions about Canadian-born Sen. Ted Cruz’s eligibility to be president haven’t drawn much attention, two former Justice Department lawyers have weighed in with a bipartisan verdict: Cruz, they say, is eligible to run for the White House.

Neal Katyal, acting solicitor general in the Obama administration, and Paul Clemente, solicitor general in President George W. Bush’s administration, got out in front of the issue in a Harvard Law Review article.

“There is no question that Senator Cruz has been a citizen from birth and is thus a ‘natural born Citizen’ within the meaning of the Constitution,” they wrote.

Anti-Cruz “birthers” had questioned the Texas Republican senator’s eligibility to be president, challenging his citizenship status because he was born in Canada. Two years ago, Cruz released his birth certificate showing his mother was a U.S. citizen born in Delaware, presumably satisfying the requirements for presidential eligibility as a “natural born citizen.”

The law review article, “On the Meaning of ‘Natural Born Citizen”, asserts that the interpretation of the term was settled in Cruz’s favor as early as the 1700’s. The lawyers wrote that the Supreme Court has long used British common law and enactments of the First Congress for guidance on defining a “natural born citizen.”

“Both confirm that the original meaning of the phrase ‘natural born Citizen’ includes persons born abroad who are citizens from birth based on the citizenship of a parent,” they wrote. They concluded someone like Cruz had “no need to go through naturalization proceedings,” making him eligible. Cruz is still weighing a presidential run.

Last month, Cruz addressed the citizenship issue during a question-and-answer session with moderator Sean Hannity, of Fox News, at the Conservative Political Action Conference. “I was born in Calgary. My mother was an American citizen by birth,” Cruz said. “Under federal law, that made me an American citizen by birth. The Constitution requires that you be a natural-born citizen.” (1 image)

Legal status? WTF does that have to do with U.S. citizenship? When Ted Cruz was born in Canada, his father had Canadian citizenship.

Seems to me that Canada could just as easily say that since Ted Cruz was born on Canadian soil to a Canadian father, he's a natural born Canadian citizen.

Do you think that wet wetbacks are more of a citizen then a U.S soldier who would happen to have his child born in say Germany?

Here is what it has to do with. I read an article a few years ago that made that point better then I did.

According to the 14th amendment, a child born on U.S. soil is a natural born citizen, regardless of the citizenship of their parents. In my opinion, it's time to modify that amendment by adding the phrase "... born to a least one citizen parent".

My copy of the US Constitution doesn't have the phrase 'natural born' in the Fourteenth Amendment.

I'm betting your copy of the U.S. Constitution doesn't have a lot of things in it that the U.S. Constitution nevertheless addresses.

The 14th amendment does say a child born on U.S. soil is a citizen, correct? And being born on U.S. soil makes the child natural born.

Certainly if you have another defition of natural born, I'd like to know where you got it from. ("Out of your ass" does not count.)

The 14 amendment does not cover natural born, so it's irrelevant to presidential eligibility.

Art. I Sec. 8 Cl. 10 of the Constitution for the United States delegates the power to Congress to
"define and punish ... Offenses against the Law of Nations".

The Law of Nations and The Constitution

``We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.''
{--Preamble of The Constitution of the United States}

Emmerich de Vattel's text, "The Law of Nations" was crucial in shaping American thinking about the nature of constitutions.

To this day, Great Britain does not have a written constitution, but instead a collection of laws, customs, and institutions, which can be changed by either the Parliament or the monarchy, or by the ``Venetian'' financiers who are the real power over the British Empire. Consequently, the British constitution remains to this day little more than a mask for the arbitrary power of the oligarchy.

The only place of appeal which the American colonists had for unjust laws was to the King's Privy Council. Attempts by the colonists to argue that actions by the British Monarchy and Parliament were unlawful or unconstitutional would be stymied, if they stayed within this legal framework which was essentially arbitrary. Although Vattel praised the British constitution for providing a degree of freedom and lawfulness not seen in most of the German states, his principles of constitutional law were entirely different from the British constitutional arrangements. Consequently, the American colonists attacked the foundation of the King and Parliament's power, by demanding that Vattel's principles of constitutional law be the basis for interpreting the British constitution.

American writers quoted {The Law of Nations} on constitutional law, almost immediately after the book's publication. In 1764, James Otis of Massachusetts argued, in one of the leading pamphlets of the day, ``The Rights of the British Colonies Asserted and Proved,'' that the colonial charters were constitutional arrangements. He then quoted Vattel, that the right to establish a constitution lies with the nation as a whole, and the Parliament lacked the right to change the fundamental principles of the British Constitution. Boston revolutionary leader Samuel Adams wrote in 1772, ``Vattel tells us plainly and without hesitation, that `the supreme legislative cannot change the constitution,' `that their authority does not extend so far,' and `that they ought to consider the fundamental laws as sacred, if the nation has not, in very express terms, given them power to change them.'|'' In a debate with the Colonial Governor of Massachusetts, in 1773, John Adams quoted Vattel that the parliament does not have the power to change the constitution.

The adoption of a constitution, by the Constitutional Congress in 1787, based on Leibnizian principles rather than British legal doctrine, was certainly not inevitable. However, British legal experts such as Blackstone, who argued that the Parliament and King could change the constitution, were increasingly recognized by the Americans as proponents of arbitrary power. The early revolutionary leaders' emphasis on Vattel as the authority on constitutional law, with his conception that a nation must choose the best constitution to ensure its perfection and happiness, had very fortunate consequences for the United States and the world, when the U.S. Constitution was later written, as we will see below.

A natural born citizen is one who became a U.S. citizen at birth. The 14th amendment describes how one becomes a citizen when born within the territory and jurisdiction of the United States, but that is not the exclusive way one may become a natural born citizen. When born outside the territory or jurisdiction of the United States, Federal statute at the time of birth determines the qualifications that must be met.

Just so you know what you are referring to, the Law of Nations is the archaic term for the more modern term, International Law.

International Law has nothing to do with domestic determinations of citizenship.

All 13 original states adopted the Common Law of England, either by their State constitution or Statute law.

The Records of the Federal Convention of 1787 [Farrand's Records, Volume 3]
3 Farrand's Records 61, John Jay to George Washington, 25 Jul 1787