Whatever happened to jus sanguinis?
Happened to meet tonight with a couple of friends who are Electoral College members for the state of Minnesota.
Apparently, this guy has sent registered letters to them telling them that “Obama is not a US Citizen” and trying to get them to cast their Electoral vote for someone else. (Except that one of them has a common name, and the registered letter was sent to the wrong person in this city.)
The Supreme Court has original jurisdiction in cases arising out of disputes between States or between a State and the Federal Government.
jus sanguinis exists–and in fact, is John McCain’s justification for being a natural-born citizen (as he was born in Panama, on a U.S. navy base, and as our current president has made eminently clear, a U.S. navy base is not U.S. soil).
The point I was making is that the issue here doesn’t turn on the full definition of "natural-born citizen,"or what the limits of that definition are, but that it has to include those who were citizens at birth because they were born on U.S. soil. This, in fact, is what Obama says happened-and hence, the issue is one of fact, not of law.(with obama providing huge amounts of evidence that he was born in hawaii, and crazy people asserting otherwise). jus sanguinis might or might not also make him a citizen, (IANAL, and haven’t read the statutes), and it would be an interesting hypothetical to ask if Obama would be a U.S. citizen if he was born in Kenya, but it doesn’t matter-as he was born in honolulu, on U.S. Soil.
and to respond entirely separately to
This is true. It still doesn’t mean the court itself does factfinding. It’ll generally appoint a special master to do that. It’s time-consuming, and the justices have better things to do.
As an entirely irrelevant historical note, SCOTUS has heard exactly one criminal trial in its history. United States v. Shipp - Wikipedia.
This is the only time I can think of (surely there are others, but not many), when the court has directly done “factfinding” in the way a trial court would.
You are right. An article I read on the dismissal of Berg’s suit in October quoted the judge as saying that Berg’s claims were “ridiculous,” “patently false,” and “frivolous and not worthy of discussion.” A closer reading of the article (and the ruling itself) makes clear that he was not referring to Berg’s claims about Obama’s birthplace, but his arguments about having standing to challenge those facts.
Gotcha. But even if he did get that opportunity, which he’d certainly lose, that wouldn’t quell the conspiracy theory but just feed it.
Exactly. As you note, the factual arguments are of even less merit than the legal arguments (IANAL, but standing is always a funny doctrine-there is a lot of case law on it, a lot of quirks).
And i agree that a hearing wouldn’t solve anything-- the conspiracy theorists would just run wild-as they have since Obama put his birth certificate on his website. (and they don’t really want to find justice-they want to get obama out of office. That’s why I keep making it clear that, in the inconcievable event that obama stands up at any point and says "I have to admit… I was actually born on the planet Krypton, Biden would probably become president (certainly as soon as the electoral college meets)-there would be no chance the process would give the republican the job.
So?
What was the ruling?
The Supreme Court doesn’t decide things the day they come to conference (or at least doesn’t announce its decisions then).
Instead, the Court generally issues an order list on mondays when the court is sitting (as it now is). The court does issue miscellaneous orders in between order lists if they have something that is time-critical (either due to events, or because they want to have the clock start on the parties’ preparation of briefs). I very strongly suspect this isn’t one of those cases, and that the motion for a stay will be denied in the order list on Monday.
http://www.supremecourtus.gov/orders/08ordersofthecourt.html
Stay denied. He didn’t file for cert.
Right. My mistake.
So what does this ruling mean, then, specifically? Is this whole thing put to bed, or just this particular attempt? (I would love to inform the “concerned family members” that brought this to my attention.)
Formally, only this attempt is put to bed. However, it very strongly suggests (as we already knew) that the Supreme Court isn’t interested in hearing a case on this. Given that that’s the only way any of the cases go forward, in practical terms, this means it’s all over.
It may be done in the courts, but it will continue to live on forever in frantic emails and on late night talk radio.
And in Great Debates.