Natural-born citizen

A natural-born citizen is a special term mentioned in the United States Constitution as a requirement for eligibility to serve as President or Vice President of the United States.

In the United States, a person is considered to be a "citizen-at-birth" either due to place of birth within U.S. territorial jurisdiction (jus soli) or through descent from a U.S. citizen (jus sanguinis), or through some combination of those two elements. Many legal experts consider a "citizen-at-birth" to be legally equivalent to a "natural-born citizen" although this has not yet been conclusively established.

"Natural born citizen" as presidential qualification

The special term "Natural-Born Citizen" is used in particular as a requirement for eligibility to serve as President or Vice President of the United States. Article II, Section 1, clause 5 of the U.S. Constitution states that:

No person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President; neither shall any Person be eligible to that Office who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty-five Years, and been fourteen Years a Resident within the United States.

The fourteenth amendment to the United States Constitution provides an additional source of constitutional doctrine that emphasizes birth "in the United States" and subjection to U.S. jurisdiction at the time of birth, as the defining elements of citizenship (other than citizenship by naturalization):

"All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the Jurisdiction thereof, are Citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. . ." Amendment XIV, section 1.

However, the full text of the fourteenth amendment does not mention the phrase "natural-born citizen," nor does it address Presidential qualifications in any way and thus provides little guidance in this matter. In fact, the phrase "natural born Citizen" isn't defined anywhere in the Constitution and its interpretation has never been squarely the subject of a U.S. Supreme Court ruling. Significantly, however, Congress, in which a number of framers of the Constitution sat, provided in the Naturalization Act of 1790 that "And the children of citizens of the United States that may be born beyond the sea, or out of the limits of the United States, shall be considered as natural born citizens" This strongly suggests that the framers understood this phrase to refer to citizenship acquired at birth (whether or not that birth had taken place on U.S. soil). This interpretation was clearly restated by a Cabinet Committee in 1940, which declared that "persons who acquired United States citizenship at birth abroad had never been regarded as naturalized."

The current effective federal statute, Title 8, Section 1401, first passed by Congress on June 27, 1952 and last amended on October 25, 1994, of the U.S. Code provides details on the circumstances under which persons are legally recognized by the United States to be "nationals and citizens of the United States at birth".

Some legal experts interpret "natural-born citizen" to mean a "citizen at birth." Under one such interpretation, anyone who is duly recognized as a "citizen at birth" persuant to the requirements of Title 8, Section 1401 of the U.S. Code would be considered eligible for the Presidency or Vice-Presidency.

However, this statutory argument is weakened by the following considerations:

Congress probably did not intend to address presidential qualifications in the statute codified at 8 U.S.C. Section 1401, because the law actually passed by Congress does not purport to relate to the "natural born Citizen" qualification for president under Article II; and
Even assuming that it was the intent of Congress to define the constitutional qualification "natural born Citizen," an enactment by Congress would be insufficient to change the Constitution.

The U.S. Supreme Court's reasoning in United States v. Wong Kim Ark, 169 U.S. 649 (1898) (which held that a person born within the jurisdiction of the U.S. but to noncitizens is thereby automatically a citizen) has been viewed by some legal scholars as indicating that a person born abroad, even to parents of U.S. citizens, does not constitute a "natural born" citizen. Likewise, Weedin v. Chin Bow, 274 U.S. 657, 663 (1927) recites that "under the common law which applied in his country, the children of citizens born abroad were not citizens but were aliens." But no Supreme Court case has yet squarely addressed what "natural born Citizen" means in the context of Article II, Section 1, clause 5 of the U.S. Constitution.

It should also be noted that terms similar to "natural born citizen" were used by William Blackstone in his Commentaries on the Laws of England, long used to interpret the U.S. Constitution, to refer to a class of British subject (or citizen) that had greater rights than a naturalized subject. Since the 14th Amendment creates only one class of U.S. citizenship (whether born or naturalized), it could be argued that the 14th Amendment effectively superseded the "natural born" requirement in Article II, so that any citizen would be eligible to become President. However, it could be equally argued that since the 14th Amendment did not amend Article II, the "natural born citizen" requirement remains; also, Wong appears to suggest that the 14th Amendment did not change the U.S. rule (derived from English common law) of citizenship by birth, except to overrule Dred Scott v. Sandford which limited that rule to white persons.

It is possible that this issue could be decided by an actual situation in which a person born abroad is elected as President. This issue could find its way to the Supreme Court, but it is also possible that the Supreme Court would decline to rule on this issue as political question, which would have the effect of settling the issue by allowing an elected President to serve.

Throughout American history, several persons born abroad to U.S. citizen parents have sought the Presidency and none were challenged on their eligibility during their election campaigns. Among the most prominent was George W. Romney, the governor of Michigan who sought the presidency in 1968. He had been born in Mexico to American parents. Romney's campaign faltered before questions of his eligibility were seriously raised.

Another question involves persons who were born in U.S. Territories. Probably the most famous of these was Barry Goldwater, who ran for President in 1964, but was born in Arizona in 1909 when it was still a territory. A more recent example of such a person was John McCain, born in the Panama Canal Zone, who sought the Republican nomination for President in 2000. No one has ever seriously questioned whether these people may be elected president.

Of historical note, Martin Van Buren was arguably the first "Natural-Born Citizen" to become President. Prior Presidents had been born British subjects and were arguably not "natural-born Citizens", but were nonetheless clearly eligible for the presidency by being "a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution." Van Buren was born in 1782, after the United States declared independence from Great Britain, but before the Constitution was adopted. Van Buren was the only president born during the period between the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States; he therefore qualified for the presidency both as a "natural born citizen" and as "a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution." The first president to have been born after the adoption of the Constitution was John Tyler, who was born in 1790.

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"Natural born citizen" as presidential qualification

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