Bipartisan Lawyer Team Say McCain’s Panamanian Birth Does Not Disqualify Him
DENVER — A pair of lawyers — one Republican, one Democrat — have concluded that John McCain’s 1936 birth outside the continental United States does not disqualify him to be president.
The likely Republican nominee was born on a U.S. naval base in 1936 in the Panama Canal Zone.
A federal judge in California has been asked to determine whether McCain meets the legal test to hold the nation’s highest office. Although McCain has called questions about his eligibility nonsense, his campaign, as it did in his first White House run in 2000, sought a review from legal experts to put the issue to rest.
“Based on the original meaning of the Constitution, the Framers’ intentions, and subsequent legal and historical precedent, Senator McCain’s birth to parents who were U.S. citizens, serving on a U.S. military base in the Panama Canal Zone in 1936, makes him a ‘natural born citizen’ within the meaning of the Constitution,” the review found.
The issue was examined by former Solicitor General Ted Olson, a Republican backing McCain, and Harvard Law Professor Laurence H. Tribe, a Democrat backing Barack Obama.
The Constitution requires that only “natural born” citizens hold the presidency. But the Founding Fathers did not elaborate on the term, and the meaning of the phrase has long been debated.
A two-page complaint filed March 6 in U.S. District Court in Riverside, Calif., argued that a judge should step in because the constitutional language was not precise, opening questions about McCain’s standing. It was filed by Riverside lawyer Andrew Aames, who says he’s a registered Republican but previously was a Democrat.
The Panama Canal Zone was a U.S. territory when McCain was born on Aug. 29, 1936. His father was stationed there in the Navy, and his mother was an American citizen.
Missouri Sen. Claire McCaskill, a prominent Obama backer, has introduced legislation that would define a “natural born citizen” as anyone born to any U.S. citizen while serving in the active or reserve components of the U.S. armed forces. Obama is a co-sponsor of the bill.
This review’s findings, by Mr Olson and Dr Tribe, serve as vindication for all present and future US military dependents born overseas. Their findings are also a victory for two fundamental American principles - justice and fairness. Also, although my understanding is that the Immigration and Nationality Act already includes US military dependents born overseas as natural-born US citizens, some sort of statute that codifies and clarifies the status of military dependents, specifically and without ambiguity, is long overdue.
The aforementioned review is a positive step forward.
Signed,
A former US military dependent, born in Japan.
Unfortunately, this bipartisan team of lawyers does not trump the authority of the Supreme Court which has already weighed in on the issue of “natural born” citizens and the sovereignty of military bases overseas. John McCain, not being born in the US within the meaning of the 14th Amendment, his only path to citizenship was naturalization. John McCain was naturalized when his parents applied for his certificate of citizenship, which they needed for his first passport.
That concept or term is very murky. Was Washington, Jefferson, Adams natural born citizens? Yet the helped frame the constitution….what was the true meaning indeed?
Something else just occurred to me. One of the attorneys mentioned in this article, Mr Olson, is a former Solicitor General of the United States. His job was to argue the position of the United States government in cases before the US Supreme Court. If there was any Supreme Court ruling or precedent that in any way precluded the possibility of Senator McCain being qualified to run for the presidency, Mr Olson would know better than anyone else save the Supreme Court Justices themselves, yet Mr Olson found that, in his opinion, there was no legal or constitutional barrier to Senator McCain’s candidacy.