The Federalist Blog

In Reply to mike:

Our basic concerns is the upholding of the Constitution. Berg, Donofrio, and Wrotnowski are Democrats. The Donofrio case argues against the natural born citizenship of Obama, McCain, and another man. So, this is not a partisan witch hunt. It is not about being a sore loser!

Obama considers the Constitution to be a “flawed document” as he has spoken about.

I have heard Berg say if Obama can prove that he is a natural born citizen then the issue will go away.

If Obama can prove that he was not a British citizen at birth through his father then Donofrio would surrender his case. Obama himself admits he is a British citizen at birth.

Obama is hiding!

No one has proved that the man cannot prove he is a citizen. Some simply state he has not provided a long form of his birth certificate as if you are a government official and can impose such a requirement. The government does with few exception accept such documentation. I understand you don’t like the state of Hawaii’s rule son proper identification but hey this what you get in a country where federalism mostly still prevails. The document posted on the internet has all the elements required by the State Dept. for proof of citizenship. I think it is ridiculous for you to expect to individually inspect someone’s birth certificate.

Also this issue has officially gone away. They didn’t even comment on the these cases. What does that tell you? Tells me. No. Merit.

There are ligament questions about McCain’s citizenship as well. Yet had he been elected no one would be having this discussion. The fact is that Barack Obama brings out the fear in people. The fear of the unknown. He is the first Black President an unknown, he has a strange sounding foreign name an unknown, he has been linked to terrorist (by his opponents) and his patriotism has been questioned. These are the only reasons we are having this discussion. Fear is the reason you question his citizenship. Citizenship is not the issue, the real issue is simply fear.

In Reply to TJ:

The issue hasn’t gone away at all! Donofrio’s case has been dismissed. Wrotnowski’s case is scheduled for conference on the 12th. Wrotnowski’s brief was written primarily by Donofrio. Donofrio states it is better written than his own.

Why would Scalia send Wrotnowski’s to conference on the day Donofrio’s is dismissed when they were fundamentally identical? They don’t have time to waste time. They’re human. They need MORE time, and Wrotnowski’s was neater. They also need more time to get some more soldiers over from Iraq (just joking (I hope)).

Expect orders on the 12th. Expect the MSM to be in disarray. Expect Cheney to raise his hand to take the oath in January (just joking! (I think)).

In Reply to pecks:

Nothing absurd about it. Your daughter was born a British citizen because that is British law. Did your daughter inherit your last name? If not, how can she inherit your citizenship? Both Howard and Trumbull said being born with a partial allegiance to to another country is unacceptable.

It has always been the law of this country that minors born outside of the allegiance of this country can elect to choose between nations upon age.

Paternity testing is totally irrelevant under laws of nature. If the father is unknown then chances are there is a law that says the mother’s condition will be that of the child. If not, then it is for the child to choose upon maturity.

My English Grandmother was born in NY in 1902, but did not become a citizen until 1910. I’ll let you figure out why.

In Reply to JoeE:

It is. At the end of the day the Court relies of precedence and seven presidents were in the same boat as Obama with one non-citizen parent. All those presidents were sworn in by the U.S. Supreme Court. So given that more 15 percent of former serving presidents have this exact situation is unlikely that the Court will hear this case. The Court would then have to some how explain how past presidents could serve under this circumstance and Obama cannot. Do you have an a reasoning for the Court to use to invalidate an Obama presidency while validating the past ones of Buchanan and Arthur and others? The Supreme Court unless under extraordinary circumstance is unlikely to invalidate Obama based on past precedence–both in officiating other presidents with similar heritage issues and because current interpretations of U.S. law only have two tiers of citizenship. Natural Born and Naturalized. So if I understand you correctly you expect the Court to overturn the validation of past presidencies base don obscure reading of the Constitution AND overturn current understanding of U.S. citizenship rules. I wish I knew you well enough to bet some good money if you are so certain.

In Reply to Mike:

I would want to see Obama’s a copy of his long-form vault birth certificate. This would include his name, mother’s name, father’s name, place of birth, time of birth, only child or not only child, the deliverly doctor’s name and his signature, and date.

The document must include a proper seal, date that is timely relative to other documents within the same jurisdiction. The document paper must be authentic to the period.

I would want independent verification of the document do to all the clamor over these matters. This would actually protect all parties involved, including Obama.

I would want to see all that. What is posted on the Internet is a certificate of live birth (COLB). This is not the same since Hawaii has given foreign-born people CLOB’s when the people were not actually born in Hawaii.

So, I am not looking for a substitute, I am looking for the real thing! Others in the government must yield up a real “certified vault copy”, yet Obama refuses to do so.

(In the same sense, its like providing authentic identification to board an airplane. If you don’t provide authentic identification you will not get on the airplane.)

I would want evidence that he is not an Indonesian citizen, or British-Kenyan citizen at birth. I would want to see his passports. He has admitted that he is a British citizen.

We are not being mean or racist towards Obama in requesting proper identification. We need to know who Obama really is and where he is from.

For at least these reasons the lawsuits exist.

In Reply to TJ:

It certainly is not, and what would you bet on?

You stated that “this issue has officially gone away”.

I stated, that “it has not”. Obviously it hasn’t. Donofrio’s case has been dismissed, but Wrotnowski’s has been sent to conference on the 12th!! The same issue!

Now, the question is: Why would Scalia, after the court dismissed Donofrio’s case, put Wrotnowski’s into play ON THE SAME DAY?

Donofrio, who wrote Wrotnowski’s, stated that the case was IDENTICAL, and that Wrotnowski’s was better written than his own, and without some incumbrances that inflicted Donofrio’s. Work it out!

As far as the ‘illigitimate’ Presidents go, I don’t accept your arguments at all, except for Arthur, and none of them are precedents. Arthur might have gone through the cracks, but that is all. A crime is not a precedent.

In Reply to roddy:

Just because the 14th Amendment only says “born citizen” doesn’t mean it isn’t the same as “natural born citizen”. People tend to forget the clause “subject to the jurisdiction” of the US. One of the 14th Amendment’s framers explicitly commented that this meant a citizen under the SOLE jurisdiction of the US, with no dual allegiance. And you can only be under the sole jurisdiction of the US at birth, if both your parents are US citizens, OR if one of them is a US citizen and the other a citizen of a country, the laws of which do not extend that country’s citizenship onto the child. Therefore a “born citizen” according to the 14th Amendment is (in most cases) a citizen born on US soil to two US citizen parents. And that is in fact a “natural born citizen”.

This is also why I don’t think that the 14th Amendment can overrule the Presidential Qualifications clause, as I had tried to construct it many days ago as a possible defense strategy. The only way for it to overrule would be by disregarding the Framer’s comment and other interpretations in the same vein.

Additionally, how did persons become both citizens and “subject to the jurisdiction” of the United States through naturalization? By renouncing all prior allegiances to other nations and by declaring their allegiance to this one in advance of course. Why would “subject to the jurisdiction thereof” be any different with persons born under the Fourteenth Amendment since this jurisdiction applies equally to all who are either born or naturalized?

[snip]

Oh man, I don’t think ANYONE has ever caught that before.

So, BO owed allegiance to the UK by the sole law of the UK and not the U.S. because the U.S. had no jurisdiction over him like they would had if he had been naturalized.

Some of the heaviest lifting I have ever seen on this subject.

In Reply to roddy:

You asked for a definition of “natural born citizen”. Please consider the following. I’d be interested to hear what you think of it.

One universal point most all early publicists agreed on was natural-born citizen must mean one who is a citizen by no act of law. If a person owes their citizenship to some act of law (naturalization for example) they cannot be considered a natural-born citizen. This leads us to defining natural-born citizen under the laws of nature, or jus naturale, the laws the founders recognized and embraced.

Under the laws of nature, every child born requires no act of law to establish the fact the child inherits through nature his/her father’s citizenship as well as his name (or even his property) through birth. As shown in the following passage from Emerich de Vattel’s 1758 work, this law of nature is also recognized by the law of nations:

“The citizens are the members of the civil society; bound to this society by certain duties, and subject to its authority, they equally participate in its advantages. The natives, or natural-born citizens, are those born in the country, of parents who are citizens. As the society cannot exist and perpetuate itself otherwise than by the children of the citizens, those children naturally follow the condition of their fathers, and succeed to all their rights. The society is supposed to desire this, in consequence of what it owes to its own preservation; and it is presumed, as a matter of course, that each citizen, on entering into society, reserves to his children the right of becoming members of it. The country of the fathers is therefore that of the children; and these become true citizens merely by their tacit consent. We shall soon see whether, on their coming to the years of discretion, they may renounce their right, and what they owe to the society in which they were born. I say, that, in order to be of the country, it is necessary that a person be born of a father who is a citizen; for, if he is born there of a foreigner, it will be only the place of his birth, and not his country.”

de Vattel, Emerich, The Law of Nations of the Principles of Natural Law (1758), Book I (Of Nations Considered in Themselves), Chapter 10 (Of Our Native Country, and Several Things That Relate to It), Section 212 (Citizens and natives).

In Reply to Joss:

And I also have to add that it might not be completely ruled out that citizens naturalized under 14A in those times only had sole allegiance to the US. Sure, they discarded their British (or other) citizenship, but I’m not sure if it really meant that they were then only subject to the sole jurisdiction of the US. For a long time, the allegiance to the crown of a British “natural born subject” was perpetual, and no change of citizenship could render their allegiance to the crown invalid. This is may be the reason, why the Framers did not write “subject only to the jurisdiction thereof” in 14A. (Just a thought.)

This has truely been an informative article and the comments are thoughtful. Permit me to add a few things here. It is my position that a Natural-Born Citizen has two citizen parents. Every president that has ever served, with the exception of one (he changed his birthdate to be after his father was naturalized. Even he knew he wasn’t natural-born), who was not eligible to the presidency under the grandfather clause, has had two citizen parents.

Thomas Jefferson wrote Virginia’s birthright law of 1777 requiring the father to be a citizen.

“We can say with confidence that a natural-born citizen of the United States means those persons born whose father the United States already has an established jurisdiction over, i.e., born to father’s who are themselves citizens of the United States. ”

~~~~~~~~~~~

The “natural born” Clause’s origins have been traced to a July 25, 1787 letter from John Jay to the presiding officer of the Constitutional Convention, George Washington. Jay wrote, “Permit me to hint, whether it would be wise and seasonable to provide a strong check to the admission of Foreigners into the administration of our national Government; and to declare expressly that the Commander in Chief of the American army shall not be given to nor devolve on, any but a natural born Citizen.”

To be considered Natural-Born, both parents must be citizens, otherwise, we’ll have anchor babies running for POTUS in the future.

In Reply to Publius:

In cases where there is an undefined term in the Constitution the Court generally (especially conservative ones) Congress define the term or they define the term based on established court cases. So since the term is undefined the most you could expect the Court to do is punt to Congress to define the term, while the least is for them to go by established court cases. Congress including Republicans will define it as the standing two-tier system most Americans understand in fear of alienating millions of voters–who would see this as a move to create a new tier of citizenship which could then be used as precedence for removing protections in other areas. That slippery slope of creating this type of basically citizenship black hole would in effect be legal chaos. Also, some of those people in Congress undoubtedly also fall into this dubious category you guys are trying to sell here, possibly ending their chance to be president. You have no chance.

In Reply to Hugh: You are asking for things that no one else in the United States has to provide to get a passport affirming citizenship. The type of document provided by Obama is established as valid proof of citizenship. A certified copy from the state saying he was born in the state. You do not need to know the hospital, birth weight, and other things to prove citizenship. So in fact you asking for additional proof beyond what the State Dept. requires. You are also asking people to ignore the fact that even other presidents also had the same circumstance as Obama and were not asked to provide such information. Call it what you want but your extra scrutiny, steadfast belief that there is fraud being committed here, and your motives seem dubious.

Joss wrote: “In any case, it shows that it always boils down to what “subjection to the jurisdiction thereof” means. Is it sole allegiance? Or does it in principle not rule out dual allegiance?”

Has to be sole allegiance since sole and absolute allegiance is required to be a citizen through naturalization. duh! Trumbull and Howard said it means not owing allegiance to nobody else. The proclamation of 1874 removes all doubt whether it was congress’ intent to recognize dual allegiances. And there is Bingham making it very clear to all except perhaps the deaf and blind.

In Reply to Publius:

Actually, Horace Gray was initially considered by President Garfield, but he rejected Gray because Gray would not supply answers to his questions. Gray like all justices of the day owed their seat on the court to the railroad companies (or bankers) because they were the ones who had the President’s ear when it came to potential nominees.

In Reply to TJ:

You said:

“So, you have failed to come to terms with the fact that Congress has the right to define natural born””as it did in 1790. So nothing is stopping Congress from coming in and retroactively defining the law again. Sorry they do that crap all the time. You would then have to prove that somehow it wasn’t their right to do it under the Constitution. All these arguments are primarily based on how Congress defined the term circa 1790/1795. Nothing will stop them from clarifying what they meant back then if they need to.”

I say:

I don’t know where you get your information. This line of reasoning couldn’t sound more wrong to me.

The founders of our country relied on the so-called natural law to give authority to their Declaration of Independence (see below). The framers of the U.S. Constitution also built upon a foundation of natural law (see below). The founders and constitutional framers also took the known provisions of International Law into account when crafting their particular documents.

But from the time we declared independence, and throughout the period of the Articles of Confederation, the term “Natural Born Citizen” never appeared in any piece of legislation or federal law. The best available derivation for this constitutional term appears to indicate that it was coined by Emmerich de Vattel, or at least authoritatively defined by him in the eyes of the founders/framers. In his text The Law of Nations, the first English translation of which appeared in 1759, Vattel described as “natural born citizens” individuals who were born in a given country to parents who are citizens of that country. The context seems to show that Vattel was explicating natural law, at least insofar as the same may be said to apply to the question of citizenship in a given sovereign country.

While provisions of natural law or international law cannot necessarily ‘trump’ a constitutional provision to the contrary, when there is no such contrary constitutional provision, it is possible for a provision of natural law or international law to govern a given case or controversy. That is to say, the U.S. Constitution has its sphere, and natural law and international law have their spheres. I believe the term “natural born citizen”, as originally coined by Vattel, and as later used by the constitutional framers, has meaning only with reference to a provision of natural law. In other words, for purposes of breathing life into the presidential eligibility clause, and in an effort to ensure that the person of the U.S. president would always embody undivided fidelity to our country, the framers incorporated an aspect of natural law that they believed fit the bill.

You appear to be adamant that subsequent action by Congress short of the adoption of a Constitutional Amendment **can** change the meaning of “natural born citizen”, such that it no longer means what it once did. In response, I would say that the language of the Constitution constitutes the supreme law of the United States. If a provision of U.S. statutory law is found by the U.S. Supreme Court to be contrary to a provision of the U.S. Constitution, properly construed, the offending provision of U.S. statutory law is declared null and void, and of no force or effect. As I mentioned in an earlier post, in the 1804 decision of Marbury v. Madison, the U.S. Supreme Court declared that its word is final when it comes to the meaning of constitutional terms, the meaning of which is in dispute and in need of explication. Whatever one may think of the propriety of this holding from Marbury v. Madison, the rule set down in 1804 continues to be the rule now.

The Supreme Court has never been presented with a case or controversy in which a definition of the constitution term “natural born citizen” was needed in order to resolve a dispute. As a result, there is exactly **no** affirmative case law on point. While the dissent in Wong Kim Ark cited the passage of Vattel’s 1758 text containing the foregoing definition for “natural born citizen”, the question in that case was one of basic U.S. citizenship, not presidential eligibility. Nevertheless, given the fact that all of our founders and framers were familiar with Vattel, I would expect the U.S. Supreme Court to adopt Vattel’s 1758 definition, if required to do so in order to resolve a current dispute. And I would expect it to do so in a way that gives no more than a passing consideration of Congressional utterances other than those that resulted in the adoption of Constitutional Amendments (like the 14th amendment).

In Reply to Publius:

That is patently ridiculous. Of course we can redefine the meaning. In the first place it was never actually defined for the purposes of the Constitution. Thus Congress, only three years after it was written, attempted to define who was a natural citizen and who was not. Using someone’s definition from before there was even an idea of a U.S. Constitution is dubious. U.S. courts would base a decision on the law as written or ask Congress to define what is means. If there was a third tier as you claim why is not listed in the Constitution. The Supreme Court notes that it is “silent” on the issue . Since the presidential requirement says “natural born” and the 14th amendment say by birth, it is much easier to draw the conclusion that they are one in the same while they don’t have to be the framers or the amenders could have easily added clarifying language stating except XXXX. But they did not, which means to read in an exception would be arbitrary. You would be creating a third tier where none exists in the document otherwise, nor in any other part of U.S. law.

In Reply to TJ:

I am convinced that you misapprehend the scope of the power that SCOTUS believes it holds, and that it has exercized regularly from 1804 onward.

According to the applicable holding of the SCOTUS decision in Marbury v. Madison, it is the sole province of SCOTUS, and of no other body or branch of government, to declare what the meaning of “natural born citizen” is. Excluding for the moment any complications that are introduced by virtue of the adoption of the 14th Amendment, and again, going by the precedent of Marbury v. Madison, SCOTUS has a blank slate before it. What this means is, if SCOTUS chooses to do so, it is entitled to start its inquiry in the year 1789 (when the Constitution was initially enacted), and move backward in time as necessary and as appropriate to arrive at a definition for “natural born citizen” that it, in its supreme position, deems is appropriate based on all the relevant facts and circumstances.

By no means is this the behavior of an activist court, or of a court that does not take its duty seriously. Rather, it is what the Supreme Court more or less always does in circumstances like this (i.e., when presented with a true case of first impression regarding a constitutional term, the meaning of which is in dispute).

Listen to me now and believe me later. I realize that you are personally convinced that actions taken by Congress cannot legitimately be ignored by SCOTUS. But I am here to tell you that in circumstances like this, they most certainly **can**, and most likely **will** be ignored by SCOTUS outright, pursuant to SCOTUS precedent in Marbury v. Madison.

In Reply to Mr Paul:

you asked: “Someon here expects a USA court of law to punish a child for the misactions/actions of its parents? Which laws in the land do that??? LOL!!!”

Well, one example that jumps to mind is every law that allows the abortion of a baby (viable or not) if the cause of its conception was rape or incest.

Since the 14th Amendment was ratified, it has changed the meaning of “natural born citizen.” As we know, the 14th Amendment is interpreted as providing that persons born in the US are citizens from birth, so long as they are subject to the jurisdiction of the US, and they are not required to go through the process of naturalization in order to reside here or exercise their rights as citizens. And “subject to its jurisdiction” means “not in the US on a diplomatic passport.” Because the 14th Amendment includes this fundamental proposition, the earlier jurisprudence on citizenship is largely irrelevant, no matter how your commenters may want to slice or dice it in order to “prove” that Senator Obama does not satisfy the constitutional qualification to be president. He has produced a birth certificate, and Hawaiian state officials have verified it is authentic. Game over. Because he was born here, and his father was subject to US law (e.g., not here on a diplomatic passport), it doesn’t matter whether both of his parents were citizens. The “naturalized from birth” is a nice talking point, but not one the courts are likely to adopt. Instead, “natural born citizenship” is citizenship from birth, either by place of birth under the 14th Amendment, or by the citizenship of one’s parents, as in the case of Sen. McCain (and all the business about the Canal Zone, McCain Jr’s Navy status, and the fringe on the flag is irrelevant.) Your commenters might also want to remember that the Constitution includes a proscription of ex post facto laws. We will know a lot more about how that will apply after the gay marriage lawsuits in California post Prop 8 are litigated, but I expect that will mean that once a status (whether citizenship or marriage) has been granted, it cannot be summarily revoked by a subsequent change in the law or the Constitution.

In Reply to Mike:

You said:

Your commenters might also want to remember that the Constitution includes a proscription of ex post facto laws. We will know a lot more about how that will apply after the gay marriage lawsuits in California post Prop 8 are litigated, but I expect that will mean that once a status (whether citizenship or marriage) has been granted, it cannot be summarily revoked by a subsequent change in the law or the Constitution.

I say:

To my mind, a SCOTUS decision resolving a current dispute as to who is and who is not eligible to ascend to the office of POTUS can be crafted which entirely avoids the messy subject of who is or who is not a U.S. citizen.

While it appears to be your opinion that the U.S. should embrace the logic and the holding of U.S. v. Wong Kim Ark and rule against Cort Wrotnowski on that basis, I believe it is well within the power of SCOTUS to ignore the entire Wong Kim Ark episode as irrelevant because relating to an entirely different issue. The question at issue (is one born in the U.S. to two non-citizens nevertheless a U.S. citizen?) in Wong Kim Ark clearly did not require SCOTUS to take a position one way or the other as to the meaning of the Article II, section 1 term “natural born citizen”. Therefore there is no legal basis to assert that the Supreme Court would have to overturn the related holding in Wong Kim Ark (changes wrought to the U.S. Constitution by the language of the 14th Amendment require the U.S. to recognize the citizenship of one born in the U.S. to two non-resident citizens) in order to conclude that the Article II, section 1 term “natural born citizen” excludes anyone not born to two U.S. citizens (Mr. Obama), as well as anyone not born on U.S. soil (Mr. McCain).

In other words, a decision along the lines of what Messrs. Donofrio and Wrotnowski are suggesting is fully consistent with a parallel conclusion that each of the major party candidates is now, and has always been, a U.S. citizen. Such a decision would therefore not implicate the Constitution’s ex post facto in the way you have suggested.

Do you have any other explanation as to why a SCOTUS decision in favor of Mr. Wrotnowski would necessary implicate the Constitution’s ex post facto prohibition?

Chester Arthur’s presidency aside (and the issue of whether or not it is ‘tarnished’ has much more to do with his extreme partisanship and manipulation of what is now the civil service than whether or not he was a natural born citizen), the issue here is the meaning of the plain language of the 14th Amendment. As you might recall, a major headache for police in NYC and Washington, DC is that cars with diplomatic plates are free to park anywhere willy-nilly, and stiff the local government on the tens of thousands of parking tickets they garner over the years. This is because persons with diplomatic passports and diplomatic immunity are not “subject to the jurisdiction” of the US, and the only remedy for their legal transgressions (whether parking tickets or murder) is declaring them ‘persona non grata’ and exclusion from the country.

As mentioned in my earlier post, even though he was born outside the US, McCain is a US citizen because his parents were US citizens at the time of his birth. Obama is a US citizen because he was born in the US and was subject to the jurisdiction of the US because of his parents’ status. I acknowledge that this might be a different issue if his father had been here on a diplomatic passport rather than a student visa.

The 14th amendment was adopted to address the issue of the newly freed enslaved persons in the South to guaranty that they would have the rights of US citizens, and it unalterably changed the definition of a natural born citizen. You might not like Justice Grey’s interpretation, but 75% of his Court bought onto it, and they were in a much better position than you and I to understand the issues the amendment was drafted to address. It would be a major change in our law for the Court to reverse this decision after more than 100 years, and because of the ‘ex post facto’ clause, I do not think that reversal of the decision would change anything with respect to the citizenship of those of us who are already alive. I do not think there is any question that Gov. Jindal meets the ‘natural born’ qualification.

And isn’t it interesting that both major candidates in this year’s election raise the issue?

In Reply to Mike:

Even if I disagree with it (I still do), I think I understand your position on the 14th Amendment phrase “subject to the jursdiction”. It is probably consistent with the tenor and logic of the Wong Kim Ark decision, at least with respect to whether a given child born on U.S. soil qualifies for citizenship or not. With what you’ve offered so far, though, I still have no reason to doubt my conclusion that if SCOTUS desires to do so, it can render a merits opinion concurring with Wrotnowski’s proposed “natural born citizen” definition without disturbing a hair on the head of the pro-citizenship holding in U.S. v. Wong Kim Ark.

I am reminded that in its decision in the Elg case, SCOTUS essentially endorsed the lower court conclusion that the individual in question, a U.S. born child whose parents were naturalized U.S. citizens, was a “natural born citizen” at birth and was entitled to the benefits of U.S. citizenship as an adult despite the decision by the parents during her childhood to return to their native country and renounce their U.S. citizenship. This is a good example of the exact term “natural born citizen” being used outside the context of a presidential eligibility dispute, but otherwise correctly in my view, since the term is being used to describe someone whose circumstances cause her to falls within Cort Wrotnowski’s proposed definition. As I am unaware of contrary examples (i.e., examples of SCOTUS decisions in which the court is expressing clear comfort with the use of the term to describe someone who falls outside Cort’s definition), I would be eager to hear from you as to whether you can cite any.

Regarding Mr. McCain, I apologize, but I am left rather empty by your repeated claims that the circumstances of his birth qualify him for the office of POTUS. He was not born on U.S. soil, which causes him to fall outside the category of born citizens specified in the 14th Amendment, as well as outside Cort’s proposed definition. If it is your contention that he came about his citizenship naturally, this tends to conflict with your contention that the 14th Amendment worked an irreversible redefinition of the term “natural born citizen” that freed such term from its moorings in Natural Law or the Law of Nations.

I can’t help but wonder whether you are trying to have your cake and eat it too in this regard. Is it your belief that if SCOTUS crafts an opinion that recognizes constitutionally-valid natural born citizen status on the part of Mr. McCain (born off-base in a Panamanian hospital in Colon), a similar conclusion with regard to Mr. Obama (which IMHO is at least somewhat less of a logical “leap”), will seem less controversial, and therefore more acceptable, by comparison? Do you believe his father’s status as a U.S. admiral somehow pushes him into the category of NBC-qualified?

Who is an admiral more like: a diplomat, or a foreign national temporarily in the U.S. on a student visa? Do you really feel comfortable splitting hairs like this on a critical Constitutional issue? Moreso, I would think a so-called ‘bright line’ rule is in order.

FWIW, you also haven’t offered any facts or legal analysis to refute my conclusion that Justice Gray’s decision in Wong Kim Ark cannot be relied upon on its own as SCOTUS precedent for the proposition that subjects or citizens of foreign countries are qualified to hold the office of POTUS provided they were born on U.S. soil. I base my conclusion more or less solely based on the facts of the earlier case being too far misaligned with those of the current controversy, such that the earlier case can’t be considered ‘on point’. This is why I say that the only way your sentiments can possibly prevail is if a subsequent SCOTUS decision set in the context of a true presidential qualifications controversy, like the one we have now, adheres to specific logic (if not the main holding) of Justice Gray’s decision in U.S. v. Wong Kim Ark, and builds on it based on the new and different facts.

That said, how confident are you that your position has the more merit than Leo’s/Corts, such that a majority of the Supreme Court as currently constituted would be persuaded to bring about the result you suggest? Isn’t it at least as likely that majority of justices will be persuaded to coalesce around the opposite position, presuming the >100 year old citizenship holding of U.S. v. Wong Kim Ark can be preserved intact, as I believe it can?

I do find it interesting that both major candidates in this year’s election have details in their background which raise this issue. But based on my opinion (based on a couple of months of paying attention to the matter) that Cort Wrotnowski’s proposed definition of “natural born citizen” is the only one that makes sense based on the facts at hand, I have to think that both of the major party candidates were well aware of their weaknesses in this regard months and probably years ago. As such, I presume that Mr. Obama and Mr. McCain were equally uninterested in raising the issue or perpetuating it in any way during the final months of the campaign.