U.S. Presidents & The Natural-born-citizen Clause

[Clueless Morgan]

Initially, I don't have a problem with the clause requiring a president to be a natural-born citizen.  I don't personally know exactly what legally defines "natural born" but my understanding was that you are born to an American citizen either in the US, on "US soil", or outside the US and are then legally "naturalized" and by that definition both Obama and Cruz would count, for me, as "natural born citizens."

As stated by Minimalist, there isn't really a legal definition of "natural born", however most scholars seem to agree that people born to at least one American citizen parent qualify, as do people born within U.S. soil, regardless of their parents' citizenship. However, people born outside of the U.S. to non-US citizen parents and then are legally "naturalized" do not qualify.

That's generally my understanding as well after doing some googling on the issue, but with the further caveat that those who are born to US citizens on non-US soil must then be naturalized but it's the sort of thing that "happens automatically" (?) to a child of a US citizen (????) - which, according to my understanding, is what happened with Cruz.  He was born to an American and was naturalized as a US citizen at birth.

Here's one of the articles I read about the issue that declares Cruz is not eligible, but that also claims to have a (the?) definition of what "Natural Born" means:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/...story.html

The Constitution provides that “No person except a natural born Citizen . . . shall be eligible to the Office of President.” The concept of “natural born” comes from common law, and it is that law the Supreme Court has said we must turn to for the concept’s definition. On this subject, common law is clear and unambiguous. The 18th-century English jurist William Blackstone, the preeminent authority on it, declared natural-born citizens are “such as are born within the dominions of the crown of England,” while aliens are “such as are born out of it.” The key to this division is the assumption of allegiance to one’s country of birth. The Americans who drafted the Constitution adopted this principle for the United States. James Madison, known as the “father of the Constitution,” stated, “It is an established maxim that birth is a criterion of allegiance. . . . [And] place is the most certain criterion; it is what applies in the United States.”

So, according to this author's citation of Madison, it looks like Madison thinks the place of birth matters as much as to whom one is born.

And from later in that article:

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In this election cycle, numerous pundits have declared that Cruz is eligible to be president. They rely on a supposed consensus among legal experts. This notion appears to emanate largely from a recent comment in the Harvard Law Review Forum by former solicitors general Neal Katyal and Paul Clement. In trying to put the question of who is a natural-born citizen to rest, however, the authors misunderstand, misapply and ignore the relevant law.

First, although Katyal and Clement correctly declare that the Supreme Court has recognized that common law is useful to explain constitutional terms, they ignore that law. Instead, they rely on three radical 18th-century British statutes. While it is understandable for a layperson to make such a mistake, it is unforgivable for two lawyers of such experience to equate the common law with statutory law. The common law was unequivocal: Natural-born subjects had to be born in English territory. The then-new statutes were a revolutionary departure from that law.

Second, the authors appropriately ask the question whether the Constitution includes the common-law definition or the statutory approach. But they fail to examine any U.S. sources for the answer. Instead, Katyal and Clement refer to the brand-new British statutes as part of a “longstanding tradition” and conclude that the framers followed that law because they “would have been intimately familiar with these statutes.” But when one reviews all the relevant American writings of the early period, including congressional debates, well-respected treatises and Supreme Court precedent, it becomes clear that the common-law definition was accepted in the United States, not the newfangled British statutory approach.

Third, Katyal and Clement put much weight on the first U.S. naturalization statute, enacted in 1790. Because it contains the phrase “natural born,” they infer that such citizens must include children born abroad to American parents. The first Congress, however, had no such intent. The debates on the matter reveal that the congressmen were aware that such children were not citizens and had to be naturalized; hence, Congress enacted a statute to provide for them. Moreover, that statute did not say the children were natural born, only that they should “be considered as” such. Finally, as soon as Madison, then a member of Congress, was assigned to redraft the statute in 1795, he deleted the phrase “natural born,” and it has never reappeared in a naturalization statute.

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In any case, regardless of what any reporter, pundit or politician claims, the only people who can legally clarify the issue of what "Natural Born" means would be SCOTUS, which, according to my understanding, has been defined in four cases and all with a very similar definition amounting to "natural born" meaning you were born in a country of parents who were its citizens.  Those two factors in conjunction are what lead to being natural-born, not simply one or the other.
http://www.fourwinds10.net/siterun_data/...1308252582

In recent years (those four cases were all tried in the 19th century) the definition of "natural born" seems to have come to mean that only one of the parents must necessarily be a US citizen.

Harvard states on no uncertain terms that Cruz IS eligible purely because his parents are US citizens and the fact that he was born on Canadian soil and not US soil is immaterial to whether he is considered a "natural born" citizen or not:
http://harvardlawreview.org/2015/03/on-t...n-citizen/

While the field of candidates for the next presidential election is still taking shape, at least one potential candidate, Senator Ted Cruz, was born in a Canadian hospital to a U.S. citizen mother. Despite the happenstance of a birth across the border, 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. Indeed, because his father had also been resident in the United States, Senator Cruz would have been a “natural born Citizen” even under the Naturalization Act of 1790

And that's the rehash of the more interesting findings of my googling