"Natural Born Citizen"Follow

Hypothetically, wonder if you could eventually. Say if an unqualified person gets elected and institutes a policy that is widely acknowledged as being harmful. At which point you'd try to tie his lack of qualifications to the poor decision that harmed you somehow.

At that point you'd likely get some political backing for your crusade as well, since if you're being harmed chances are someone with political weight was harmed as well.

I guess the next question (or part of the first one?) is: Why does it require someone with "political weight" to bring such suits? I get not wanting a system where we're inundated with suits from people unhappy with the results of the last election, but isn't there some happy medium here? I suppose I see this somewhat similarly to the whole referendum issue I spoke about a few weeks ago. Specifically with the SCOTUS declining to rule on prop8 because of standing (more or less).

Shouldn't "the people" have recourse if/when their politicians fail to do what they want? Representative democracy has a lot of good things going for it, but one of the flaws is that no representative is going to hold a full set of positions that a majority of those he represents agrees with. So we often vote someone in because a majority of the voters agree with positions A, B, and C, but perhaps not D and E. But when D and E happen, and a majority oppose it, you can't do anything about it, and just saying "you could have voted for the other guy" doesn't really help.

We have systems like referendums and lawsuits in place because the courts, by design and intent, are supposed to allow redress when simply voting for a representative isn't sufficient. We have no issues with people suing over things like environmental problems, or lack of protective regulation in the workplace, and no one argues they can't because their representatives could have passed laws covering that stuff if they'd really cared to. Isn't the whole point of a judicial branch to our government the assumption that legislating and executing those laws isn't sufficient? The courts should be where you can go when the laws aren't fair, or the rules aren't being applied, or result in something harmful.

I say "should", but it seems like more often they just become additional points of implementing policy. Which I find problematic.

The problem is that even that is subjective. Looked at broadly, nearly any law can be labeled as harmful. And a political office? How do you say that someone isn't harmed? By its nature governing involves shifting of help/harm effects around the society. We inflict harm in the form of taxes and regulations in order to provide what we hope are helpful services to the community. How these are allocated absolutely affects each and every resident of the area being governed. Something as simple as deciding how to allocate funds or resources within an area inflicts harm on some people.

I suppose this is a liberal/conservative thing, but as a conservative I view *all* laws as having a harmful aspect and accept them when they are better than the alternative. Liberals tend to more likely view laws as "good" or "bad" in absolute terms. So to a liberal, unless the politician passed or implemented a "bad law", then no one was harmed. But to a conservative, every politician in office every day is engaged in harm. It's just that the harm they do is less harmful than the harm which would occur if they weren't there (usually). Government is a necessary infringement of liberty. Necessary because in its absence within a community, liberty cannot be protected against what would otherwise be mob rule.


Um... Which I suppose is why I have such serious qualms when people simply accept as legitimate actions of government purely because the majority likes it. I see that as a failure in the purpose of government in a liberty focused society.

Edited, Aug 27th 2013 2:50pm by gbaji

Why? This is my fundamental disagreement. IMO, every single member of the governed have standing to ensure that those governing them have legitimate authority to do so. The act of governing inflicts harm on those governed, every single day. Period.

Yeah I imagine it'd be a difficult case to bring, even under the best of circumstances. It kind of hypothetically came up in my mind along the same means someone would challenge some kind of law that was harmful in some way. Really it's far enough into the hypothetical for me at this point where I can't really grasp all of what would be required, the whole situation seems pretty far-fetched already and I'm having trouble wrapping my brain around all the stuff.

Just shooting from the hip and whatnot, going where my meandering mind took me.

You're certainly allowed to have your opinion. It's not really a good argument based on the legal principle of standing but people are allowed to be mad about any number of judicial decisions whether they understand them or not.

Yes. Based on my (non-lawyery) understanding of the principle of standing, I believe they made the right judgement. Again, you're allowed to believe they made it wrong but people believe that judges "got it wrong" about a bajillion things a day and yet they still have the authority to make those decisions.

First off, the claim would be that Obama is not constitutionally qualified to be President of the US. Not being a NBC is what would disqualify him. Thus, any action he has taken as President which might not have been taken had he not been president is valid to examine. Second, it's not limited to me personally, but anyone who might sue. So anyone who's had their health insurance increase because of Obamacare. Anyone who hasn't been able to get a job because the markets still haven't recovered from the recession.

If those are not concrete enough, the families of any soldier who has died in any military action since he took office. If you argue that they would have died if another president had been in office, then the families of anyone injured or killed in the Benghazi attack.

The point is that the decisions made in the oval office are so broad and so encompassing that it's hard to argue that *anyone* isn't affected by them. And while there's some legitimacy to argue that these are part of the office and thus can't be sued over, we're not talking about suing the president because of that loss of life or money or freedom or whatever. We're talking about suing over whether the person who made those decisions was qualified to hold the office in the first place. The very fact that the constitution contains a natural born citizen requirement assumes that someone who is a natural born citizen would make different (presumably "better") executive decisions than one who is not. So we must also assume that those who are subject to those decisions have reason to care about whether the person in the office meets that criteria.

To argue otherwise would effectively argue that the rule doesn't exist at all. But until/unless the constitution is amended to remove it, our legal system should proceed as though it does matter. And if it does matter then it matters to everyone.



Yes. You can't just insert a "Not if he wasn't president" stipulation as fact though. The whole thing hinges on that assumption since that's what being a natural born citizen means in this context. It is direct because if he's not a NBC, then he can't be president, and thus can't govern over me in any of a number of ways which may be harmful. One directly follows from the other.

Again, let's remember that this was a criteria written into our constitution, not just a plus/minus for voters to consider when casting their vote. Just like the age restriction, it operates under the assumption that someone who does not meet those criteria can't be a good president. In the same way that the requirement that people be a certain age and pass a drivers test before they can legally drive assumes that if they don't meet those requirement they wont be good/safe drivers. Your argument would be like saying that since a licensed driver could also have caused an accident, that the fact that the driver who crashed into you didn't have one had nothing to do with it.

That generally doesn't fly.




You're rewording things. Redress is not the same as eliminate. By your interpretation no one could ever sue over anything since you can only sue after injury is suffered, and the injury can't be undone once it occurs. Redress can also mean a change to policies which caused the injury in the first place, even if that change wont retroactively prevent the injury in question. That is, in fact, the entire idea behind punitive damages. It's less about the person injured than the next person who might be.



Wrong. You're being way too narrow in your interpretation. You're also missing the larger point here. It is not always required that one wait for an injury to occur in order to sue in a situation where injury can be assumed to occur in the future. In cases of negligence, it's a different story. But this isn't the case here. No one's arguing that Obama would negligently act as president and cause injury (and he'd be protected from that anyway). The argument (which I touched on earlier) is that the constitution assumes that if he's not a NBC he *can't* perform the job of president correctly. Thus we can proactively assume harm to every citizen and resident of the US if he's not qualified to hold the office. It's axiomatic to the question at hand.

To argue otherwise would be the equivalent of saying that a homeowner has no right to require that a contractor show him his contracting license prior to working on his home. He can only sue after the fact *if* the contractor makes a mistake. But that's absurd. The requirement of a contracting license assumes that someone without one is not qualified to do contracting work. Thus anyone seeking a contractor can require that contractor to provide a license ahead of time. Since the president is effectively working on all our houses, the same logic says that each and every one of us has a right to require that he prove his qualifications for that office. Which in this case means proving he's a natural born citizen.


Um... Which is why every citizen and resident of the US should have standing.



It's not about whether you like or dislike his policies. That is the wrong way to look at it. And it's not about who won or lost an election. The idea that McCain could sue because being president is some kind of prize that he lost, while the millions of people directly affected by the actions and decisions of the president just don't matter is completely backwards IMO. That's a very "me" way of looking at things. The office isn't about empowering the guy who won the election. It's about serving the people. And the writers of our constitution decided that the people cannot be served by a president who is under the age of 35 or is not a natural born citizen. That means that "the people" are the interested party with regard to those qualifications, not just the guy who ran against him.

Edited, Aug 27th 2013 6:53pm by gbaji

No. I'm upset about *how* they were thrown out. Huge difference.



Um.... That's because most of the pro-Obama zealots put their own likes/dislikes ahead of the process itself. That whole "ends focused" thing I've mentioned many times on this forum. If the person in question had been a Republican, you would hold the exact opposite position because the end in that case would be something you want (other party's candidate disqualified). Meanwhile, I would agree that the method used to dismiss the case was wrong and that the judge(s) should have just ordered my candidate to produce the full vital records, looked them over, and made a ruling.

But that's because, as I've pointed out many many times (and will presumably have opportunity to point out many more times in the future), conservatives tend to care more about the methods in use, while liberals care more about the end result. We can even speculate that this is why McCain went out of his way to establish his qualifications before running, while Obama appears to have gone out of his way to do the opposite. Obama viewed the natural born citizenship requirement as an annoying obstacle that he did the minimum to get around, then acted shocked when people wanted a more transparent process. Of course, then his campaign and supporters got into the act and instead of supporting the need to provide the requested documents turned the whole thing into a "birther by association" game (which apparently continues to this day).


Again, if it were a Republican in that situation, I'd have been right there with the liberals arguing for complete proof. But then again, it's unlikely that a Republican would be in this situation because he'd do as McCain did and make sure his qualifications were in place ahead of time. Liberals are the ones who seem to love creating division over things like this. You'd almost think there was book that teaches them how to do this exact thing.

No, you're not.


Right. Every judge was a pro-Obama zealot. Well, that certainly added credibility to your "I only care about how it happened!" argument


That's that Tea Party bible, right? The one they hand out to every new member of the leadership and tell them to study?

Man, I wonder if us liberals can find a copy somehow...

Van Buren was the first President born in the U.S. Prior Presidents were presumably grandfathered in (har).

I'm pretty sure there were others. Chester A. Arthur was rumored to have been born in Canada. Lincoln's father was an immigrant. And so forth.

Franklin Pierce - "at least we know he was born here!"

Well, yeah. In that I don't believe you.


I just went through the process in place and why the judges' rulings were appropriate. Feel free to take that to mean "I don't care" since, you know, I'm not pouting that my multiple Birther lawsuits were all thrown out.

No you didn't. You just said "this is the way the judges ruled, so they must be right". Don't you have your own opinion on anything?