Obama Conspiracy Theories

The question erupts from time to time in comments here whether a citizen of the United States, born abroad to American parents, is eligible to be president of the United States. I think that there is an affirmative majority view on this issue, but the Supreme Court has never ruled on it, and it remains a subject of debate among constitutional  scholars (most recently prompted by the candidacy of Senator John McCain who was born in the Panama Canal Zone).

they believe that the courts are the only place to resolve constitutional ambiguity

Recently, some extreme writers on citizenship, who espouse crank views about the eligibility of President Obama, think that the voice of the people is rising up to demand that the courts decide any ambiguity in the question of who is and who is not eligible to be president of the United States. While certain that their views must prevail, they also believe that the courts are the only place to resolve constitutional ambiguity. (more…)

In 1967, an essay entitled “Natural Born Citizen,” by the Hon. Pinckney G. McElwee of the Bar of the District of Columbia, was entered into the Congressional Record by Mr. Dowdy. This is an extensive and scholarly treatment of the history and the cases related to the term “natural born citizen”. It was written in the context of a possible candidacy of Governor George Romney (born in Mexico) for president.

The material may be well-known to readers here, but I found some things I did not know. I learned the history of the changes between the Naturalization Acts of 1790 and 1795, and I may have been proven wrong in my thought that the change that “natural born” was only incidentally dropped.

This text certainly has profound application to the eligibility of John McCain, but  it assumes throughout that those born citizens in the United States are natural born citizens.

Thanks to the reader who sent me this.  Text follows: (more…)

Walter Dellinger

Somehow, with the dismissal of Kerchner v. Obama and the retirement of Leo Donofrio (yet again), it rather feels like the debate over the attempts to redefine “natural born citizen” have fallen off the radar, leaving Obama Conspiracy fans with little more than the Taitz/Smith/Lincoln soap 0pera for entertainment.

However, before closing the box and taping it shut, I wanted to mention something in more detail that has been briefly mentioned before, and that is the 1995 testimony before Congress of assistant attorney general Walter Dellinger. The preceding link will take the interested reader to the full text. I’ll include a substantive citation here.

Because the rule of citizenship acquired by birth within the United States is the law of the Constitution, it cannot be changed through legislation, but only by amending the Constitution. A bill … that purports to deny citizenship by birth to persons born within the jurisdiction of this country is unconstitutional on its face. Second, … constitutional amendments on this topic conflict with basic constitutional principles. To adopt such an amendment would not be technically unlawful, but it would flatly contradict our constitutional history and our constitutional traditions. Affirming the citizenship of African-Americans that Dred Scott had denied, in 1862 President Abraham Lincoln’s attorney general wrote an opinion for the secretary of the treasury asserting “[a]s far as I know … you and I have no better title to the citizenship which we enjoy than the ‘accident of birth’—the fact that we happened to be born in the United States.” Today, in 1995, we cannot and should not try to solve the difficult problems illegal immigration poses by denying citizenship to persons whose claim to be recognized as Americans rests on the same constitutional footing as that of any natural-born citizen…. (more…)