January 6, 2012

The Heart of the Clause 5 Issue

By Bruce Walker
Republicans, in discussing who is a proper person to be president, look at Obama and the requirements of Article II, Section I, Clause 5, which provides that "[n]o 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[.]" What do these words mean?  Do they mean that Marco Rubio and Bobby Jindal are not eligible because they are the children of immigrants who were not citizens at the time of their birth?  The sparse language does not answer that sort of question.  Only by resting on the self-appointed and  extra-constitutional privileges of federal judges to "interpret" the Constitution can "natural born Citizen" be defined, but even this reliance on unelected federal judges really solves nothing.  The Supreme Court this year could read the Constitution as meaning that a "national born Citizen" is anyone born in America as the child of legal...(Read Full Article)