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celticlord2112 -> RE: A New Day Dawns! Welcome President-Elect Obama! (11/11/2008 1:32:15 PM)
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quote:
I'm pretty certain he's alive.
And his mother was a U.S. citizen, so anywhere he was born, he's a U.S. citizen.
How the law works.
Not exactly.
Article II §1 of the Constitution provides the following qualifications for the Office of President of the United States:
quote:
No Person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President; neither shall any Person be eligible to that Office who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty five Years, and been fourteen Years a Resident within the United States.
However, neither the Constitution nor any subsequent act of Congress explicitly defines "natural born Citizen". The common presumption and construction is a haphazard blending of citizenship by place of birth (jus solis) and citizenship by blood or lineage (jus sanguinis).
Interestingly enough, the first Supreme Court case to take a position on the matter was the infamous Dred Scott v. Sanford, (60 US 393) wherein the dissenting opinion emphasized jus solis over jus sanguinis.
quote:
The first section of the second article of the Constitution uses the language, 'a natural-born citizen.' It thus assumes that citizenship may be acquired by birth. Undoubtedly, this language of the Constitution was used in reference to that principle of public law, well understood in this country at the time of the adoption of the Constitution, which referred citizenship to the place of birth.
In United States v Wong Kim Ark (169 US 649), the Supreme Court reinforced the doctrine of jus solis by extending citizenship to persons born within US Jurisdiction of non-US citizens.
In Montana v Kennedy (366 US 308), the Supreme Court ruled against the principle of jus sanguinis, holding that a person born in 1906, whose mother was a native-born US citizen and father was a non-citizen, who was born overseas and then moved to the United States, did not hold US citizenship by birth. (While no subsequent ruling has invalidated this decision, many of the relevant laws have changed since the ruling, so the extent to which it still is binding precedent is uncertain)
However, just to make sure the waters are good and muddied, Article I §8 of the Constitution explicitly empowers Congress "to establish a uniform Rule of Naturalization"; arguably, this power extends to an explicit legal definition of "natural born", although to date Congress has declined to enact such a definition.
It is worth noting, also, that John McCain's status as a "natural born Citizen" was itself a matter of debate early in the election cycle, owing to the fact of his birth in the Panama Canal Zone, which did not meet even then the definition of territory under US Jurisdiction, even though both parents were unquestionably native-born citizens, and the circumstances of his birth in the Canal Zone was a consequence of his father's service in the United States Navy.
The only clear statement that can be made about who is and is not a "natural born Citizen" of the United States is that any challenge to a person's status tends to raise more questions than provide answers.
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