Qualifications for President and the “Natural Born” Citizenship Eligibility Requirement
laws and statutes in the United States, the following conclusion was provided with respect to natural born citizenship:
Upon principle, therefore, I can entertain no doubt, but that by the law of the United States, every person born within the dominions and allegiance of the United States, whatever were the situation of his parents, is a natural born citizen.[1]
That the place of birth was the rule governing “natural born” citizenship under American jurisprudence, regardless of the status of one’s parents (except for children of official diplomats or hostile armies), even before the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment, was explained by the Supreme Court in United States v. Wong Kim Ark, in 1898, which noted that the Fourteenth Amendment “affirms the ancient and fundamental rule of citizenship by birth within the territory, in the allegiance and under the protection of the country, including all children born here of resident aliens, with the exceptions or qualifications (as old as the rule itself) of children of foreign sovereigns or their ministers, or born on foreign public ships, or of enemies within and during a hostile occupation of part of our territory….”[2] The Supreme Court in Wong Kim Ark cited with approval those previous judicial rulings which held that every child born on the soil of the United States, and subject to its jurisdiction, are “natural born” citizens of this country, without regard to the nationality or citizenship status of their parents.[3] The Supreme Court, this time using the term “native born citizen” again explained in that case:
Passing by questions once earnestly controverted, but finally put at rest by the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution, it is beyond doubt that, before the enactment of the Civil Rights Act of 1866 or the adoption of the Constitutional Amendment, all white persons, at least, born within the sovereignty of the United States, whether children of citizens or of foreigners, excepting only children of ambassadors or public ministers of a foreign government, were native-born citizens of the United States.[4]
As discussed previously, the Supreme Court has used the term “native born” citizens (as expressly used in Wong Kim Ark to mean those born in the United States “whether children of citizens or foreigners”) as synonymous with, or at least included within the term “natural born,” in subsequent references to eligibility to the Presidency. In United States v. Schwimmer, for example, the Court stated: “Except for eligibility to the Presidency, naturalized citizens stand on the same footing as do native born citizens.”[5] Similarly, in Luria v. United States the Supreme Court stated: “Under our Constitution, a naturalized citizen stands on an equal footing with the native citizen in all respects, save that of eligibility to the Presidency,”[6] and noted in 1931 that other than the one instance in the Constitution which provides a difference, that is, the eligibility to the Presidency, “[t]he alien, when he becomes a naturalized citizen, acquires, with one exception, every right possessed under the Constitution by those citizens who are native born.”[7]
- ↑ Lynch v. Clarke, 3 N.Y. Leg. Ob. 236, 250 (1844). Emphasis added.
- ↑ 169. U.S. at 693.
- ↑ 169 U.S. at 662–663, citing United States v. Rhodes, 27 Fed. Case 785 (No. 16151) (C.C. Ky. 1866), and Lynch v. Clarke.
- ↑ 169 U.S. at 674–675. Emphasis added. Note that the dissent in Wong Kim Ark stated that under the majority’s controlling decision, a child born to alien parents in the United States “whether of the Mongolian, Malay or other race, were eligible to the Presidency….” 169 U.S. at 715 (Fuller, C.J. and Harlan, J. dissenting).
- ↑ 279 U.S. 644, 649 (1929).
- ↑ 231 U.S. 9, 22 (1913).
- ↑ United States v. MacIntosh, 283 U.S. at 623–624. See also Baumgardner v. United States, 322 U.S. 665, 673 (1944),
