Ted Cruz
Ted Cruz.
Mary Brigid McManamon is a constitutional law professor at Widener University's Delaware Law School.



The concept of "natural born" comes from the common law, and it is that law the Supreme Court has said we must turn to for the concept's definition.

On this subject, the common law is clear and unambiguous.

The 18th-century English jurist William Blackstone, the preeminent authority on it, declared natural-born citizens are "such as are born within the dominions of the crown of England," while aliens are "such as are born out of it."

The key to this division is the assumption of allegiance to one's country of birth. The Americans who drafted the Constitution adopted this principle for the United States. 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."

Cruz is, of course, a US citizen. As he was born in Canada, he is not natural born. His mother, however, is an American, and Congress has provided by statute for the naturalization of children born abroad to citizens.

Because of the senator's parentage, he did not have to follow the lengthy naturalization process that aliens without American parents must undergo. Instead, Cruz was naturalized at birth.


Ted Cruz and Donald Trump.

Article I of the Constitution grants Congress the power to naturalize an alien. That is, Congress may remove an alien's legal disabilities, such as not being allowed to vote. But Article II of the Constitution expressly adopts the legal status of the natural-born citizen and requires that a president possess that status.




The Harvard Law Review Forum says Cruz is eligible, but he may not be.


Second, the authors appropriately ask the question whether the Constitution includes the common-law definition or the statutory approach. But they fail to examine any US sources for the answer. Instead, Katyal and Clement refer to the brand-new British statutes as part of a "longstanding tradition" and conclude that the framers followed that law because they "would have been intimately familiar with these statutes."


Third, Katyal and Clement put much weight on the first US naturalization statute, enacted in 1790. Because it contains the phrase "natural born," they infer that such citizens must include children born abroad to American parents. The first Congress, however, had no such intent. The debates on the matter reveal that the congressmen were aware that such children were not citizens and had to be naturalized; hence, Congress enacted a statute to provide for them.

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Moreover, that statute did not say the children were natural born, but only that they should "be considered as" such. Finally, as soon as Madison, then a member of Congress, was assigned to redraft the statute in 1795, he deleted the phrase "natural born," and it has never reappeared in a naturalization statute.
