Arizona and Harvard Profs Differ Over McCain’s Eligibility for Presidency

Constitutional Law

Arizona and Harvard Profs Differ Over McCain’s Eligibility for Presidency

Posted Jul 11, 2008, 07:23 am CDT
By Debra Cassens Weiss

Law professor Gabriel Chin of the University of Arizona disagrees with a highly regarded Harvard constitutional law scholar, as well as the U.S. Senate, on how to interpret Article II’s citizenship requirement for U.S. presidents.

Harvard Law School professor Laurence Tribe has concluded that John McCain is a natural-born citizen, making him eligible for the presidency. The Senate has taken Tribe’s side, unanimously approving a nonbinding resolution declaring McCain to be a natural-born citizen.

Chin begs to differ, the New York Times reports. His argument is based on a 1937 law granting citizenship to children born to American parents in the Panama Canal Zone after 1904. The law was adopted about one year after McCain was born there. Because the law conferred citizenship after McCain’s birth, the presidential candidate was not a naturally born citizen, Chin argues.

Tribe says Chin is wrong in asserting that the law granted citizenship, the story says. Instead, Tribe says, the law simply clarified that Congress had already granted citizenship under a prior law covering children born to American parents “out of the limits and jurisdiction of the United States.”

Chin says the prior law didn’t apply because the Canal Zone was beyond U.S. limits, but not beyond its jurisdiction.

Experts told the Times the debate may be academic, since courts will be reluctant to decide the issue. Voters who seek a ruling may see their cases tossed for lack of standing. A suit challenging McCain's eligibility is pending in Concord, N.H., federal court.

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Posted by UA Grad - 1 month, 2 weeks, 3 days, 17 hours, 40 minutes ago

Chin is correct. McCain is ineligible. But hey, after the last eight years we don’t have a real Constituion anymore so what the heck. It’s not like the Supreme Court hasn’t appointed dictators in the past, abandoning federalism and overruling state supreme courts interpretations of state law.
Posted by J.D. - 1 month, 2 weeks, 3 days, 16 hours, 58 minutes ago

Sounds good! Maybe the GOP can nominate an actual conservative instead.

NOW, Gabriel Chin should look into the inconsistencies surrounding Obama’s birth certificate about which Hawaiian officials have spoken inconsistently.

THEN, Chin should explain how the 14th Amendment was NEVER designed to give birth right citizenship to the children of illegal aliens.

That’s if he’s interested in the whole picture, of course.
Posted by John - 1 month, 1 week, 1 day, 14 hours, 15 minutes ago

A non-binding resolution to change the constitution by the senate is illegal. To change the constitution you need to abide by article V. The police that pledge to uphold the Constitution should arrest these law breakers. McCain is ineligible and like a Obama owned by the media cartel, Lakid and neocons. The sanctions (globalist term for siege) against Iran is another act of war. War is the power of state and this war, the war on drugs, war on terror, war on poverty.. All disasters of the CFR and enemies of freedom.

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