Q: Is Ted Cruz eligible to be president?

A: No.

Q: Why Not?

A: The Constitution requires one to be a natural born citizen to serve as president. Sen Cruz is a citizen, but is not a "natural born citizen".

Q: What is required for one to be a "natural born citizen"?

A: One must have been born on U.S. soil. Cruz was born in Canada, on Canadian soil. The two countries don't share any soil.

Q: Cruz argues that the law makes him a citizen at birth, and that is a "natural born"  citizen.

A: There is a law that makes one born on foreign soil to a U.S. citizen a U.S. citizen, but that is a naturalization statute.

Q: Doesn't naturalization require an application and approval process?

A: No. An entire group of individuals may be made statutory citizens at birth, without having to apply for it.

Q: Isn't a statutory citizen at birth the same as a "natural born citizen"?

A: No. There are only two kinds of citizen: natural born and naturalized. One can't be both. Anyone who is not natural born is naturalized.

Q: What are are come examples of large groups of people naturalized at birth by a statute?

A: Citizens of  the territories of Puerto Rico, the Marianas (Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands) and the U.S. Virgin Islands" These are not U.S. soil. They are protectorates. We administer them but don't own them. No one born on them is a natural born citizen. There are naturalization statutes that makes persons born there citizens at birth. See Insular Cases.

Q: What about the Panama Canal Zone?

A: It was a leasehold. We leased it from Panama, on a 99-year lease. When we could not negotiate an extension, we had to give it back, and did.

Q: What about the grounds of our embassies in foreign countries, or our military bases?

A: All leased. The land is not "incorporated" U.S. soil.

Q: So Sen. John McCain is not eligible?

A: Correct. He is not.

Q: Where does the term "Natural born citizen" come from? What did it originally mean?

A: It is taken from the 1608 Calvin's Case, authored by Edward Coke.

Q: Why do we have to go all the way back to 1608 to get the definition?

A: Because there haven't been any later cases, such as U.S. Supreme Court cases, that did. On this point one is going to have to trust legal historians to have done their jobs. Legal terms of art, once established generally do not change, even if they are not used for centuries. "Natural born" is a term from English common law. It actually goes back even further than 1608, which was about the time that court proceedings, which had been done in Latin, began to the be done in English. The term goes back to ancient Roman law, usually as natus naturalis, or some variant thereof. "Natural born" was just a translation from the Latin.

Q: Aren't there some definitions that require both born on the soil and also having at least one citizen parent?

A: That is a combination of rhe rules of jus soli and jus sanguinis. There is actually a long legal tradition for this. But it was not the meaning taken from Calvin's Case by the Framers.

Q: What about the 14th Amendment?

A: The 14th Amendment follows closely the definition from Calvin's Case., except that it made an exception of unassimilated indigenes (Indians). Later a statute would naturalize them all as U.S. citizens, and make their lands U.S. soil.

Q: Is there a comprehensive analysis of all this?

A: Yes. An article entitled "Presidential Eligibility".