: re: It May Be Time to Resolve the Meaning of ‘Natural Born’

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: barry levine 
Date: Tue, Jan 19, 2016 at 10:00 AM
Subject: re: It May Be Time to Resolve the Meaning of ‘Natural Born’
To: "letters@nytimes.com"

To the Editor:

    It has been established since Marbury v. Madison (1803) that the U.S. constitution means what our Supreme Court says it means. But in two centuries since it was mandated that a president must be a "natural born citizen" of the U.S., no federal court has ruled on what that means.  A strict originalist might lean on Blackstone to disallow anyone born outside the dominion of our union. A Shakespearean might disallow anyone born by caesarean section. If we are to live by the rule of law, it cannot be enough to enact law; we will need a court to tell us what that means.

Barry Haskell Levine

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/19/us/politics/it-may-be-time-to-resolve-the-meaning-of-natural-born.html