While Texas Sen. Ted Cruz is an American citizen and qualified to hold his current office, he is not a "natural-born citizen" and cannot legally serve as president or vice president, a constitutional law professor says.
"The concept of 'natural born' comes from common law, and it is that law the Supreme Court has said we must turn to for the concept's definition," writes Mary Brigid McManamon, a constitutional law professor at Widener University's Delaware Law School,
in The Washington Post.
She quotes 18th-century English jurist William Blackstone, who said natural-born citizens are "such as are born within the dominions of the crown of England," making anyone aliens "such as are born out of it."
Place of birth was seen as key to allegiance in common law, thus making anyone born outside a country's territorial borders as not "natural born," McMananom says.
"The Americans who drafted the Constitution adopted this principle for the United States," she writes. "James Madison, known as the 'father of the Constitution,' stated, 'It is an established maxim that birth is a criterion of allegiance. ... [And] place is the most certain criterion; it is what applies in the United States."
While the first U.S. naturalization statute, enacted in 1790, seems to imply that children board to Americans abroad are "natural born," the phrase was deleted by Madison five years later when it was redrafted, she points out.
Children born outside the United States to at least one American parent are considered naturalized citizens at birth, and not natural born, McMananom argues. Cruz's mother was American when he was born in Canada, making him a citizen, but unqualified for the White House, she says.
"Let me be clear: I am not a so-called birther. I am a legal historian," McMananom writes. "President Obama is without question eligible for the office he serves. The distinction between the president and Cruz is simple: The president was born within the United States, and the senator was born outside of it. That is a distinction with a difference."
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