"Natural born citizen" status "not a frivolous issue"

"Natural born citizen" status "not a frivolous issue" - Olson researches for McCain

A couple weeks ago I pondered whether Barack Obama might not be a "natural born citizen" as constitutionally required to be eligible for the presidency because he was born in Hawaii, if one presumes Hawaii's continued independent, occupied status, not legally part of the United States.

After looking into it a bit more, I posted in an update that John McCain was actually born in the Panama Canal Zone, and had his own issue with this question, but that while it hasn't ever been ruled on the Supreme Court, the most likely interpretation of that clause of the constitution is that "natural born" means one is born a citizen, whether by jus soli (place of birth) or jus sanguinisI (parentage), as opposed to being naturalized, in which case whether Hawaii is part of the U.S. is a moot point when it comes to Obama.

Well today the NY Times has an interesting story looking into this exact question in regards to McCain. The general consensus seems to be that McCain is eligible for the reason above, but it is far from a settled matter, and McCain's campaign considers the issue serious enough that "the campaign recently asked Theodore B. Olson, a former solicitor general now advising Mr. McCain, to prepare a detailed legal analysis," research on which Olson has yet to finish. (Coincidentally, Olson was the one who argued for the plaintiffs before the Supreme Court in Rice v. Cayetano.)

Hawaii's status with regard to Obama is of course a whole different aspect of the issue, but according to at least one person who wrote an article on the topic in the Yale Law Journal, the basic question of exactly what "natural born citizen" means “is certainly not a frivolous issue.”

Update 2/29: WaPo "The Trail" campaign blog reports that Obama is co-sponsoring legislation drafted by Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) that would ensure McCain is qualified by defining "natural born citizen" to include "any person born to any citizen of the United States while serving in the active or reserve components of the United States Armed Forces."

Some say it is obvious that McCain is qualified, but the senators seemed to take the question seriously enough that they feel the need to introduce legislation just to make sure, and once you get into this it is apparent that there are in fact many different interpretations.

Defining it as military, rather than just being born as a citizen, seems unnecessarily restrictive to me. By that definition, if one considers Hawaii independent, Obama would not qualify.

There are extensive comments after the post, in case anyone wants to chime in with some background about Hawaii...

Posted: Wed - February 27, 2008 at 05:23 PM

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"Natural born citizen" status "not a frivolous issue" - Olson researches for McCain

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