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in January I wrote about the controversy over whether Texas Senator Ted Cruz is eligible to be President. The issue centers around the meaning of the phrase "natural born citizen," which according to Article II of the U.S. Constitution is what one must be in order to qualify to be President. At least three lawsuits have been filed seeking to get the court to clarify the meaning of this phrase, and as the blog Constitution Daily
recently reported, all have failed. As the blog post points out:
Legislative attorney Jack Maskell, writing for the Congressional Research Service in 2011, found that “the weight of more recent federal cases, as well as the majority of scholarship on the subject, also indicates that the term ‘natural born citizen’ would most likely include, as well as native born citizens, those born abroad to U.S. citizen-parents, at least one of whom had previously resided in the United States, or those born abroad to one U.S. citizen parent who, prior to the birth, had met the requirements of federal law for physical presence in the country.”
Anyone interested in learning more about the arguments concerning this phrase should really give Maskell's memo a quick read.
