Qualifications for President and the “Natural Born” Citizenship Eligibility Requirement
interferences of foreign governments in executive elections, which have inflicted the most serious evils upon the elective monarchies of Europe.[1]
“Ambitious foreigners” who may be “intriguing for the office” of head of state, which had been the unfortunate experience in Europe, appeared to be a generalized and widespread concern at the time of the drafting of the Constitution, as was the concern over the possibility of allowing foreign royalty, monarchs, and their wealthy progeny, or other relatives to control the government of the new nation. Max Farrand, in his treatise on the adoption of the Constitution, discussed these concerns and rumors during the Convention of 1787:
During the sessions of the convention, but it would seem especially during the latter part of August, while the subject of the presidency was causing so much disquiet, persistent rumors were current outside that the establishment of a monarchy was under consideration. The common form of the rumor was that the Bishop of Osnaburgh, the second son of George III, was to be invited to become King of the United States.[2]
Others have noted that rumors were extant concerning colonial statesmen approaching or making inquiries of other foreign royalty about seeking the chief executive’s position of the United States, including rumors involving Price Henry of Prussia, and the ascension of King George’s second son, Frederick, Duke of York. Presidential scholar Michael Nelson has commented:
The presidency they were creating was, the framers realized, the closest analog in the new constitution to a king, just by being a separate, unitary executive. Even before the convention assembled, von Steuben had disseminated a rumor that Nathaniel Gorham, president of Congress under the Articles of Confederation and a convention delegate from New Hampshire, had approached Price Henry of Prussia about serving as America’s King. Similar stories involved the ascendancy of King George’s second son, Frederick, Duke of York. During the summer, these rumors gained new currency. The story spread that the convention, whose deliberations were secret, was advancing the plot behind closed doors.[3]
The question of not only “foreign influence” of wealthy persons immigrating to the United States to become President, but also the issue of an American monarchy, were thus very real concerns of the populace, as well as the framers, and appeared to establish the context in which the role, qualifications, duties, and powers of an American chief executive were developed.[4] As noted by constitutional scholar Akhil Amar, the concerns and anxieties over ambitious and duplicitous foreigners, and the “possibility that a foreign earl or duke might cross the Atlantic with immense wealth and a vast retinue, and then use his European riches to buy friends on a scale that no home-grown citizen could match,” led the framers to incorporate Article II’s “most questionable
- ↑ Joseph Story, Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States, Vol. 3, §1473, pp. 332–33 (1833). Story distinguished “natural born” citizens eligible to be President from “foreigners” who are generally excluded, noting the exception only for a “naturalized citizen to become president” when such person was a citizen at the time of the adoption of the Constitution “out of respect for those distinguished revolutionary patriots, who were born in a foreign land, and yet had entitled themselves to high honors in their adopted country.” Story, at §1473, pp. 332–333.
- ↑ Max Farrand, The Framing of the Constitution of the United States, 173 (Yale University Press 1913).
- ↑ Nelson, Presidential Studies Quarterly, at 395.
- ↑ “The Framers had no antecedent to draw upon when creating the presidency and determining the qualifications for the office. There was no executive officer under the Articles of Confederation. The Framers’ only model was a negative one: they wanted an executive officer who would not have the attributes of a hereditary monarch.” Lawrence Freidman, An Idea Whose Time Has Come—The Curious History, Uncertain Effect, and Need for Amendment of the ‘Natural Born Citizen’ Requirement For the Presidency, 52 St. Louis L.J. 137, 141 (Fall 2007).
