The Constitutional Meaning Of “Natural Born Citizen”
by Alan Lovejoy
The Constitution requires that the President of the United States must be a natural born citizen:
Article II, section 1, clause 5: “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.”
If “natural born citizen” is a synonym for “citizen,” then there is no reason for adding the exception “or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution.” None at all. Being a citizen is not sufficient, unless you happened to be alive when the Constitution was adopted.
So what, then, is a “natural born citizen”? To answer that question definitively will require a full examination of the concepts and history of citizenship.
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