Is Ted Cruz Eligible to be President of the United States? (original) (raw)
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PROF. MERLIN M. MAGALLONA VS. HON. EDUARDO ERMITA
The conversion of internal waters into archipelagic waters will not risk the Philippines because an archipelagic State has sovereign power that extends to the waters enclosed by the archipelagic baselines, regardless of their depth or distance from the coast. R.A. 9522 was enacted by the Congress in March 2009 to comply with the terms of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS III), which the Philippines ratified on February 27, 1984. Such compliance shortened one baseline, optimized the location of some basepoints around the Philippine archipelago and classified adjacent territories such as the Kalayaan Island Ground (KIG) and the Scarborough Shoal as "regimes of islands" whose islands generate their own applicable maritime zones. Petitioners, in their capacities as "citizens, taxpayers or legislators" assail the constitutionality of R.A. 9522 with one of their arguments contending that the law unconstitutionally "converts" internal waters into archipelagic waters, thus subjecting these waters to the right of innocent and sea lanes passage under UNCLOS III, including overflight. Petitioners have contended that these passage rights will violate the Constitution as it shall expose Philippine internal waters to nuclear and maritime pollution hazard.
In the summer of 2015, the majority of Republican candidates for President announced their opposition to birthright citizenship. The constitutional dimensions of that right revolve around two cases decided at the end of the nineteenth-century, Elk v. Wilkins (1884) and United States v. Wong Kim Ark (1898). The first held that an American Indian man born in the United States was not a citizen under the fourteenth amendment; the second, that a Chinese American man born in the United States was indeed a citizen under the amendment. This Article juxtaposes the history of these decisions. By showing the distinctive constitutional and political status of Native peoples, this history underscores the unconstitutionality of efforts to limit birthright citizenship and the consistency of Elk with the egalitarian ideals of the Fourteenth Amendment. Further, by providing new facts about the litigants, lawyers, and communities in these cases, this history provide new perspectives on the meaning of citizenship and its role in judicial and administrative law. Although John Elk’s non-Native lawyers presented him as seeking to assimilate and abandon his tribe, Elk was part of a Winnebago community and likely sought only freedom from the federal government’s aggressive policies of land acquisition and domination. While Wong Kim Ark’s lawyers were products of an organized Chinese migrant community, Wong also likely sought citizenship less as a quest for full assimilation than as an effort to maintain his transnational family in the face of exclusionary immigration policies. Wong’s citizenship, however, permitted his Chinese-born son to migrate to the United States, be drafted into the Army in World War II, and make a career with the Merchant Marines. The histories also show the limits of judicial action, as Congress quickly undermined the effect of each opinion, and the divergent opinions both contributed to expanded administrative power. Together, these histories challenge idealized concepts of citizenship, freedom, and individual action that remain with us today, and provide a richer understanding of race, constitutional doctrine, and administrative structure in the United States.
Through an examination of archival materials and decisions of the Philippine Supreme Court, this article documents and analyzes the history of citizenship laws and jurisprudence in the Philippines from the close of the nineteenth century to the immediate postwar period. It demonstrates that the articulation between race and nation, mediated by citizenship, varied according to historical and geopolitical contexts, which informed citizenship debates, policies, and interpretations of legal texts. The short-lived 1899 Malolos Constitution offered an inclusive principle of jus soli, but it was superseded by the concept of Philippine citizenship enunciated in the 1902 Philippine Bill. Emblematic of contradictions within the U. S. imperial apparatus, the same legal framework that was used to exclude Filipinos from U. S. citizenship provided the means for individuals of Chinese or part-Chinese parentage to be granted Philippine citizenship based on jus soli starting in 1911, a direction the U. S. State Department began to oppose in 1920. The Commonwealth period and the crafting of the 1935 Philippine Constitution gave ascendancy to the principle of jus sanguinis, but only after the formal end of U.S. rule did the Supreme Court reverse its stance on jus soli in favor of a myth of descent.
Your Baby is an Alien: Outdated Immigration Rules and Assisted Reproductive Technology
The growing use of assisted reproductive technology (ART) and legal recognition of same-sex relationships is raising questions regarding the recognition of parent-child relationships. State and foreign family law have been wrestling with these issues for decades, but U.S. immigration law has lagged far behind. So far, guidance exists on only one ART related issue under the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA): whether a U.S. citizen transmits her citizenship to a child born abroad. Unfortunately, that guidance is contradictory. The U.S. Department of State (DOS) requires genetic kinship for citizenship transmission. The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals focuses on the parents' marriage, requiring no genetic link between a child born in wedlock and his U.S. citizen parent. Married, different-sex couples are the most likely to use ART to build a family; however, this issue may be more important to same-sex couples. Because birth certificates are the primary evidence used to demonstrate a parent-child relationship, same-sex couples are more likely to suffer from a genetic-relationship requirement. This Article aims to resolve these and other issues regarding INA recognition of parent-child relationships stemming from ART. It briefly reviews the various ways in which state laws have dealt with ART related parentage issues. It then explores the legislative, administrative, and judicial history of the relevant INA provisions, paying particular attention to developments dealing with "legitimacy," an issue that raised similar questions during the twentieth century. This Article argues for deference to state and foreign law in determining the parentage of children conceived through ART and in determining whether the child was born "out of wedlock." Florida Coastal Law Review [Vol. XII:47 R
Book Chapter - Creating (Un)equal Families in the Child Citizenship Act
This essay interrogates the U.S. Child Citizenship Act of 2000 (CCA) through legal and discursive analysis of the congressional hearings, records, and the act itself to understand the ways in which citizenship and adoption are discussed and practiced as liberal gifts from the West to needy orphans of the Third World. The CCA was a response, in part, to the deportation of adult adoptees who did not have U.S. citizenship and had committed minor crimes that are deemed deportable offenses due to terrorism and anti-immigrations laws passed in 1996. I show how the law attempts to equalize and legitimate adoptive families. Yet, in vying for equal status, the law and its proponents further marginalize birth families and non-adopted immigrant families, who do not have privileged access and can still be deported. Ultimately, the final version of the CCA also highlights the requirement for adult immigrants, adopted (and no longer “helpless orphans” in need of rescue) or not, to be proper neoliberal subjects. It further demonstrates the ways in which certain subjects can, on the one hand be celebrated by and “belong” to the nation as part of “forever families,” and on the other, still be so easily expelled.
Are You a Citizen of the United States?
What makes a citizen? Since the Founding Fathers do not directly address the issue we can infer what we think the Founder’s mean by their language in the Constitution. If all men are created free why did some states have slaves while others did not? Answer: to appease the southern states so the delegates will ratify the Constitution or risk breaking up the union. The answer can further be obtained though historical studies of the Constitution, Supreme Court cases such as Dred Scott as well as Lincoln’s speech on the matter, and literature, specifically Alexis de Tocqueville’s writings on his observations while visiting the United States. Unfortunately the answer is not as simple as codified law or U.S. code on Naturalization.