“Rudy v. Lee” Supreme Court Case Could Put Spotlight On Obama’s Constitutional Eligibility

[Bigun]

You don't understand me in the least; and the only one seeking to undo the Constitution is you, who persists in taking the one view - out of several equally valid views - that would destroy this country, all for what appears to be a set of cheap little ideological trinkets.

And no, I won't forgive you for falsely, and knowingly, misrepresenting my position.  You're a better person than that, as you've demonstrated in most other debates.

You're also ignoring - I have to assume consciously since you seem to have read much on legal theory - that it is standard in the common law to impose time limitations, particularly in equity, after which contestable issues are no longer contestable and the answer is set.

Let's try a hypothetical.  I assume that you, along with most other people, believe that African Americans are not entitled to reparations for the damages done by American slavery, correct?

Why is that?

Suppose that tomorrow somebody - Bad Person - kidnaps you and forces you into hard labor at the wrong end of a whip, or a branding iron.  As a result, you suffer terribly.  Because of your sudden disappearance, your family also suffers terribly; they struggle mightily but end up losing their home and your wife and kids have to go live in a shelter.  Your kids end up in ghetto-level public schools.  Your son drops out of high school and takes up with a gang.  Your daughter becomes pregnant by a man who disappears and also drops out of school to raise the baby.  Tens years later your son, finally settling down after doing 8 years in prison for aggravated assault and grand larceny, marries the woman whom he'd already gotten pregnant.  They live in a double-wide mobile home in an area where there is a lot of crime and your son works as a janitor.  Their son also ends up taking up with a gang and eventually ends up spending life in prison for first degree murder.  Your daughter's child ends up being a junkie, living in the ghetto with a string of abusive men.  She has several children, all of whom end up in foster care.  One of those children herself ends up having a child - your great grandson - who never amounts to anything and spends his life doing odd jobs and living in his car.

When you're rescued, do you have the right to seek damages from Bad Person?  Obviously you do.

What about your wife?  Yes.  Derivative claims for damages are part and parcel of personal injury law, and she has a derivative claim for the economic and emotional losses she suffered because you were taken.

What about your children?  Yes.  They, too, have derivative claims for economic and emotional losses.

What about your grandchildren?  No.  Generally speaking the causal connection between your kidnapping and their misfortune is too tenuous, represents too long a chain of inferences, for them to have a cognizable claim for damages.

In other words, by dint of time claims for damages get cut off.  There is injury without recompense.  It's a fact of life.  It's a fact of the law.


Just as there, it is perfectly legal and logical to say that a challenge to Obama as not being a "natural born Citizen" can only be brought prior to his election as president and once he has been elected, then the discussion is over.  He is presumptively a "natural born Citizen" and that presumption cannot be rebutted after the election.


I could catalog volumes and volumes of other places in which legal rights - and Constitutional rights - get cut off after certain periods of time or after the claimant has taken some other action.  As a simple example, suppose Johnny lives in Texas, was born there, always lived there, has never traveled outside the state, and only deals with locals.  Suppose that one day he finds out he's been sued by Billy, a life-long resident of New York, in a New York State court, for stealing computer equipment from Billy's house in Yonkers.  If Johnny files a motion to dismiss for lack of personal jurisdiction, he's very likely to win and that will be the end of it.  He won't have to defend against the suit.  However, if he first files an answer to the complaint in which he denies the allegations, and does not at the same time file a motion to dismiss for lack of personal jurisdiction, then he will have to defend against the lawsuit and if he doesn't will suffer a default judgment that Billy can then take down to Texas and use to seize Johnny's house.  In fact, if Billy's evidence includes a security camera tape that captured someone who looks like Johnny, Johnny could lose if the jury believes that's him on the tape and if they disbelieve his counter evidence about never leaving Texas.

A travesty?  Hardly.  That is standard issue law on personal jurisdiction.

Then there is a concept called collateral estoppel.  That doctrine, essentially, cuts of relitigation of issues that have already been fully litigated.  In the plain vanilla variety it prevents a plaintiff from suing the same defendant for the same thing a second time after the plaintiff has already lost once.  However, it has some more exotic permutations, including one that can be termed defensive estoppel in which a person who won on an issue in one lawsuit can use that win against completely different people who sue him in completely different lawsuits, if those lawsuits are brought based on the same facts, even if these other people never had a chance to have their say in the first lawsuit.  How's that for justice?  You lose your day in court against somebody you think hurt you all because somebody else sued that person and lost in an entirely different case.  Happens more often than you might think.

There is nothing cowardly or orwellian about applying concepts like laches, or collateral estoppel, or cutting off claims for damages because the chain of causation has become a little too long; it's how the courts keep the world from getting itself completely off track.

The same reasoning is equally applicable to deciding whether Obama is a "natural born Citizen" and cutting off a case because, for example, it was brought too late - i.e., after the election - is right down one of the sweet spots of fundamental, time-honored common law jurisprudence.


And on the substance:  you have certainly done a lot of thinking on your position, for which I congratulate you, but you have not proven beyond doubt that your theory is the only theory going.  There are other theories - including the ones propounded here - that are just as valid as yours.  In point of fact, there is another canon of judicial decision-making that weighs against your theory and in favor of one of the others.  It builds off of the ancient canon that where there are two equally valid interpretations of a statute, then that interpretation is to be applied which does the least amount of violence to the rest of the statute, or to some other relevant value - such as the continuing ability of the federal government to operate.  Brought to this arena, that canon implies that where there are two competing interpretations of the term "natural born Citizen" - and there are - then that interpretation which does the least amount of violence to things - in this case, that interpretation which does not bring the entire federal government to its knees - is to be favored over the other interpretation.

If the Supreme Court were to choose one of those others over yours, you are entitled to your disappointment, but you are not entitled to accuse the Court of cowardice nor of Orwellian dissembling.

Are you unaware that there were MANY court efforts to stop Obama's name from appearing on ballots all over this land prior to his first election because of  EXACTLY this issue but, as far as I know, NONE got very far because of the lack of standing of the plaintiffs. They could show no injury at that point so the case was tossed out. 

Who EXACTLY is responsible for ensuring that ALL presidential candidates meet ALL Constitutional standards before their name can appear on the ballot?  Who do we complain to for redress when that doesn't happen?

Thank you for the rest of your post as I would not have know anything about any of that before you told me!   

[MACVSOG68]

Which is what I have been saying throughout this entire exercise!  What you cannot do is go to it when it suits you and ignore it when it doesn't!

Huh?....

As we've both agreed, I'm slow on the uptake, but if I understand what you just said, you agree with the statement, and have been saying all along:

"The language of the Constitution cannot be interpreted safely except by reference to the common law and to British institutions as they were when the instrument was framed and adopted."

If so, why would the concept of natural born citizen be anything other than the British version of natural born subject?

[Bigun]

Huh?....

As we've both agreed, I'm slow on the uptake, but if I understand what you just said, you agree with the statement, and have been saying all along:

If so, why would the concept of natural born citizen be anything other than the British version of natural born subject?

Because that is not the ONLY source they referred to in writing the Constitution. As I understand it there were at least three copies of Vatell's Law of nations (two in the original French and one English translation) in that room and, according to Mr. Madison's notes they were well used. And  mainly because it had been decided that we would NOT have a king but a president. In England it mattered little that anyone born on English soil was considered an Englishman because lines of ascension to the throne were already long in place. It was patently obvious to the founders that English Common Law was NOT going to be adequate in the case of the presidency precisely because there would be no line of ascendancy and they turned to Vatell!
 

[Bigun]

This comment is for any casual reader of this thread who may come along in the future and become confused but what some others have written on this thread.

It has never been my intention on this thread to argue for or against any suit brought in any court anywhere!

My sole and entire purpose has been and remains to discover what the words "Natural Born Citizen" meant to the men who incorporated them into our Constitution. Nothing more or less than that!

[MACVSOG68]

It was patently obvious to the founders that English Common Law was NOT going to be adequate in the case of the presidency precisely because there would be no line of ascendancy and they turned to Vatell!

Well then you don't agree with CJ Taft when he said the Framers considered all sorts of laws "but, when they came to put their conclusions into the form of fundamental law in a compact draft, they expressed themselves in terms of the common law, confident that they could be shortly and easily understood."

No doubt exists they were concerned about the distinction between a monarch and a president, though a number of the delegates thought "his excellency" should be elected for life.  It explains in part the lengthy debates they had over the powers of the legislative branch.  But if in your mind there is no doubt about the meaning of the term natural born citizen, why then did they just assume anything more than its customary usage in Britain?

Certainly at least the Massachusetts delegates understood how that term was used at least in Massachusetts, since it was used interchangeably with the term "natural born subject".  One would think at least those delegates would have said, "whoa now". 

But since it had not been explained differently, and the Constitution was filled with language commonly in use at the time, why should not the Court in Wong have interpreted it that way?

[Bigun]

Why are you so doggedly determined to convince this ignorant ole country boy from East Texas that you are right, and thus every child of every illegal alien who happens to be born on U.S. soil should have the opportunity to become president of the United States one day? Why is that so damned important to you?

[MACVSOG68]

Why are you so doggedly determined to convince this ignorant ole country boy from East Texas that you are right, and thus every child of every illegal alien who happens to be born on U.S. soil should have the opportunity to become president of the United States one day? Why is that so damned important to you?

I wasn't trying to convince you Bigun.  Though you just said you were searching for the truth and had no particular view on the subject.  Hopefully, like you, I was debating the issue to provide alternatives you may have inadvertently overlooked. 

So now the issue is illegal aliens and their offspring?  How does this relate to Obama?