After Prof. Jacobson, The Birthers Need A Group Hug!!!

As Soon As He Replaced The Batteries In His Head-Cooling Propeller Beanie, Apuzzo Was Planning On Some Heavy Duty Thinking!

Well,  Cornell Law Prof. William Jacobson finally weighed in on Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz’s presidential eligibility and as expected, the Birthers are going to need a great big group hug. Because they are in some major emotional pain! Here are some excerpts from his long analysis:

The key to understanding why I reach that conclusion that Rubio, Jindal and Cruz are “natural born Citizens” requires understanding the problem.

There are strong arguments in favor of Rubio, Jindal and Cruz each being a “natural born Citizen” as that term most reasonably can be understood through its plain text because they became citizens by birth.  Their “natural born Citizen[ship]” also is consistent with the concepts, respectively, of citizenship by birth place (Rubio, Jindal) and parentage (Cruz), from which the term “natural born Citizen” is believed to derive historically.

and significantly, he finds there is no two citizen parents requirement:

8. There Is No Requirement That Both Parents Be Citizens

One common phrasing of objections to Rubio, Jindal and Cruz being deemed “natural born Citizens” is that, regardless of where they were born, both parents would have had to be citizens.

That argument is devoid of almost any support.  The text does not say so.  There is no demonstrable evidence that is what the Framer’s intended, or that’s how the term was commonly understood at the time of drafting.  Such a requirement also is not found in the almost contemporaneous, or even in British law which (as described in the section above) was confused and changed over time, but typically followed the father’s lineage for children born abroad.  See also discussion of Supreme Court cases below.

and, in his conclusion at 14:

A reasonable reading of the plain text of the Constitution supports Rubio, Jindal and Cruz being “natural born Citizen[s]” because they were citizens by birth.  There is no clear, demonstrable intent otherwise from the Framers or clear, commonly understood use of the term to the contrary at the time of drafting the Constitution.  The British term “natural born Subject” as well as concepts of “natural law” were not clearly relied upon by the Framers, and are in themselves not clearly contradictory to this plain reading of the text.

The burden should be on those challenging otherwise eligible candidates to demonstrate through clear and convincing historical evidence and legal argument why such persons should be disqualified.  That has not happened so far, and if two hundred years of scholarship is any indication, it never will happen.

The ultimate arbiter on the issue likely is to be voters, not Supreme Court Justices.

It is for these reasons that I believe Marco Rubio, Bobby Jindal and Ted Cruz are eligible to be President.

Here is the link to his findings:

http://legalinsurrection.com/2013/09/natural-born-citizens-marco-rubio-bobby-jindal-ted-cruz/

One thing I disagree with Jacobson about is his treatment of the Wong Kim Ark case. I do not think he read the case enough to realize that the Court made separate findings throughout the seven part decision which takes its statements on natural born citizenship out of the “dicta” category. I will do a separate article on that. However, he did dispose of the Emer de Vattel nonsense. He also speared Leo Donofrio a few times.

It’s a good read!

Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter

Note 1. The Image. This is from, The Ghost Busters TV show, about which Wiki says:

The Ghost Busters was a live-action children’s television series that ran in 1975, about a team of bumbling detectives who would investigate ghostly occurrences. Only 15 episodes were created.

This series reunited Forrest Tucker and Larry Storch in roles similar to their characters in F Troop. Tucker played Jake Kong (his first name is never actually given in this series), and Storch played zoot suit-wearing Eddie Spencer. The third member of the trio was Tracy the Gorilla, played by actor Bob Burns (credited as Tracy’s “trainer”).

The series was unrelated to the 1984 film Ghostbusters (though Columbia Pictures did pay Filmation for a license to use the name).

Each episode would always begin with Spencer and Tracy stopping at a convenience store to pick up the tape recording (recorded by co-executive producer Lou Scheimer) that explained their mission for the episode, in a parody of Mission: Impossible. It would be hidden inside a common object such as a bicycle, typewriter or painting. The message would always end by saying, “This message will self destruct in five seconds.” It would then explode in Tracy’s face for comic effect. Their investigation would take them to the same “old castle” on the outskirts of the city, and after a series of chases and pratfalls the Ghost Busters would corner the ghost (and his/her “sidekick”), which they would dispatch back to the afterlife with their Ghost Dematerializer.

Time Enough At Last??? (Or, Prof. Jacobson Enters The Birther Zone!!!)

Prof. Jacobson Wins His Place In The Guinness Book Of World Records After Successfully Dodging 1,749 Copies Of  Vattel’s The Law Of Nations!

There is a fifth dimension beyond that which is known to man. It is a dimension as vast as space and as timeless as infinity. It is the middle ground between light and shadow, between science and superstition, and it lies between the pit of man’s fears and the summit of his knowledge. This is the dimension of imagination. It is an area which we call the Birther Zone.

Professor William Jacobson, a Cornell law professor, is finally ready to take on the question of whether Mark Rubio and Ted Cruz are eligible for the Presidency. Here are a few excerpts from an August 13, 2013 article:

Ted and Marco Eligibility – I Can’t Put It Off Any Longer

The analysis of the Natural Born Citizen clause in the Constitution as it applies to Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio.

I promised to do this long ago, and did the research with the assistance of a former student, but couldn’t bring myself to actually write it up for multiple reasons:

(1) it’s a subject which brings out the most vitriolic commenters and e-mailers (hey, why don’t we talk about a non-controversial subject instead, like Islam or Gay Marriage?) and I haven’t been in the mood;
(2) views on the subject have become like religion, incapable of disproving;
(3) I’ve generally been distracted, with each week bringing some new “crisis” to write about;
(4) I’m lazy by nature;
(5) the process of relocating from RI to NY started in March and continued through July, and sapped what little free time I had;
(6) this isn’t actually my job,
(7) I’m lazy by nature (but I repeat myself); and
(8) bullet-proofing the analysis against the inevitable criticisms requires more painstaking drafting than normally takes place on the internet.

But it can’t be ignored anymore.

http://legalinsurrection.com/2013/08/ted-and-marco-eligibility-i-cant-put-this-off-any-longer/#comments

The links there to a previous article in, February 2013,  reveal some of what he has been going through:

The nature of the hostility directed at me has changed over the years.

In 2008-2010, it was mostly Obama supporters upset that someone who taught at an Ivy League law school would dissent.  I guess they figured their love letters weren’t working, so that has mostly (but not completely) stopped.

The most unhinged of late are Elizabeth Warren supporters.  (More on that, perhaps, in a later post.)

But along that road, there has been a consistent allegation that I was part of some vast conspiracy to conceal Obama’s alleged lack of constitutional qualification, first on birth place grounds and then on “natural born citizen” grounds.

That, even though I was one of the few people to defend the right of anyone to question the constitutional qualifications of any presidential candidate, so long as the challenge was not based on conspiracy theories and making stuff up.  I never accepted the Barack Obama birthplace conspiracy theories any more than I accepted the Trig Palin birth mother conspiracy theories.

I, almost alone, delved into the history of constitutional challenges, dating back to Chester Arthur on through George Romney and John McCain, with others along the way, to show that challenging constitutional qualification was not inherently racist and did not begin with Barack Obama.  No one pushed back against the abuse of the “Birther Card” more than I did.  (On the flip side of the coin, some left-wingers accused me of being a “Birther” because I refused to buy into the race card use.)

He then goes on to discuss the hostility in more detail. There are a lot of good comments at both stories. I read his blog regularly, although I usually don’t comment very much. Two of his excuses for putting this off will strike a chord with both Obots and Anti-Birthers, to wit:

(2) views on the subject have become like religion, incapable of disproving;

(8) bullet-proofing the analysis against the inevitable criticisms requires more painstaking drafting than normally takes place on the internet.

Those two items lead me to suspect that he has had a whole lot more run-ins with the Birthers than I ever expected. Personally, I am curious what verbal canards the Birthers will lob at him and whether they will also chunk physical copies of The Law of Nations at him, in the manner of Arabs throwing shoes. I can hardly wait to read his analysis, which I suspect is not going to make Birthers very happy.

Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter

Note 1. The Image. This is from the TV series, The Twilight Zone. This episode is called “Time Enough At Last.” About which Wiki Says:

It was adapted from a short story by Lyn Venable (Marilyn Venable), which had been published in the January 1953 edition of the science fiction magazine If: Worlds of Science Fiction. “Time Enough at Last” became one of the most famous episodes of the original Twilight Zone, and has been frequently parodied since. It is “the story of a man who seeks salvation in the rubble of a ruined world” and tells of Henry Bemis /ˈbiːmɪs/, played by Burgess Meredith, who loves books, yet is surrounded by those who would prevent him from reading them. The episode follows Bemis through the post apocalyptic world, touching on such social issues as anti-intellectualism, the dangers of reliance upon technology, and the difference between aloneness (solitude) and loneliness.

There is more here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_Enough_at_Last