Canadian-Born Cruz Faces Potential Hurdle To Presidential Aspirations
Canadian-Born Cruz Faces Potential Hurdle To Presidential Aspirations
NPR's Robert Siegel interviews Sarah H. Duggin, a professor of law at Catholic University, about how the U.S. Constitution's "natural born" citizenship requirement for someone to become president would apply to Sen. Ted Cruz.
ROBERT SIEGEL, HOST:
Sarah Duggin is a professor of law at the Catholic University of America's Columbus School of Law, and we have asked her to tell us what the U.S. Constitution says about natural-born citizenship and whether that affects Ted Cruz's presidential aspirations. Senator Cruz was born in Canada to an American mother and a Cuban father. He maintained a dual U.S.-Canadian citizenship until 2013. Professor Duggin, welcome to the program.
SARAH DUGGIN: Thank you very much.
SIEGEL: Is this is an open-and-shut case? Is Ted Cruz obviously eligible to run for president under the Constitution?
DUGGIN: No, I don't think it's an open-and-shut case. I think the better argument is that Senator Cruz is eligible to run for president and to serve as president of the United States. But absent a Supreme Court ruling or a constitutional amendment, it is not open-and-shut.
SIEGEL: It's not? I mean, is he not a natural-born American citizen?
DUGGIN: Senator Cruz was naturalized at birth, but the reality is that we don't know precisely what the framers of the Constitution meant when they put into Article II that no person except a natural-born citizen shall be eligible to the office of president.
SIEGEL: They were obviously thinking ahead because all of them had been born into British colonies. So what did they - what do we think they had in mind?
DUGGIN: We don't know exactly what that is. When the framers put that provision in the Constitution, they did not debate it. It simply appeared following a letter from John Jay to George Washington. And Jay was concerned about the idea that foreigners might come into the government particularly, we believe, because there was concern that the son of a foreign nobility might end up using power, money, influence to grab the United States presidency and install a European nobleman as president.
SIEGEL: He'd become president of the United States and Duke of North America or some such thing.
DUGGIN: Absolutely.
SIEGEL: This was a concern, we think, at the time.
DUGGIN: We do.
SIEGEL: There is a line of succession. Should the president and the vice president, let's say, both die, the next person in line is the speaker of the house. And there's nothing requiring the speaker to be a natural-born citizen.
DUGGIN: That's absolutely right. And after the speaker of the house, then we go to the president pro tem of the Senate and then to the cabinet, with the secretary of state first in line under the current succession statute. And we've certainly had secretaries of state. Two come instantly to mind - Henry Kissinger and Madeleine Albright, who were naturalized Americans but were not natural-born Americans, quite clearly.
SIEGEL: Do you think that all of this stuff about President Obama not having been born in the - the claim that he really wasn't born in Honolulu where his birth certificate has been produced - and it's been pretty well demonstrated. Do you think that that has given more life to this whole argument about what a natural-born citizen is?
DUGGIN: Yes, I definitely do. I think, though, that it existed before because there were some lawsuits. They were short-lived lawsuits filed against Senator Goldwater because he was born in Arizona while it was still a territory.
SIEGEL: It wasn't a state yet, yeah.
DUGGIN: Yes, it wasn't a state yet.
SIEGEL: Some people said John McCain, who was born in the Panama Canal Zone I guess, or near the Panama Canal Zone - that should've disqualified him.
DUGGIN: Absolutely. And that's when the biggest brouhaha arose with respect to the meaning of the natural-born citizenship.
SIEGEL: Has this been litigated? And has the Supreme Court made clear what that means?
DUGGIN: The Supreme Court has never made any sort of ruling on this subject. There have been some lower court cases, but those were dismissed on grounds that that the people bringing them were not necessarily the proper parties. They were dismissed on standing grounds.
SIEGEL: You mean to have standing you have to be somebody who would be disqualified from the presidency because they've been naturalized?
DUGGIN: (Laughter) No. You could be someone, for example, I believe, who's running against a candidate who is arguably not a natural-born citizen. But you probably can't simply be a voter with a general grievance. And that's what the earlier cases involved.
SIEGEL: Professor Duggin, thank you very much for talking with us today.
DUGGIN: Thank you. It's been my pleasure.
SIEGEL: That's Sarah Duggin of the Catholic University of America's Columbus School of Law in Washington, D.C.
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