Thomas H. Lee spoke with Breitbart news about Ted Cruz’s eligibility for the U.S. presidency.
Fordham University law professor Thomas H. Lee told Breitbart News on Monday that Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) is “probably” eligible to run for president–but not because his mother was a U.S. citizen.
According to an originalist interpretation of the Constitution, Lee argues, and existing British common law at the time of the Constitution, Cruz would need to have inherited U.S. citizenship from his father to qualify as “natural born” after being born abroad.
Lee published an op-ed in the Los Angeles Times on Sunday arguing that Cruz would be eligible under liberal theories of interpretation of the Constitution, but not under the originalist theory to which he [Cruz] himself subscribes.
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He told Breitbart News that he has been studying the question of “natural born” citizenship since last May, and was working on a 40,000-word law review article on the subject when it suddenly became a hot political topic.
Lee observed that the only way for the issue to be settled by a court would be for “another candidate to bring a suit for a preliminary injunction against a state Republican Party.”
Donald Trump, he mused, would be unlikely to do so, since he would lose control of the issue to the courts.
Democrats might try to use the eligibility issue against Cruz later, he acknowledged, but they would be “hypocritical” to use originalist arguments they otherwise reject.
Lee told Breitbart News that if he himself were a judge, he would find Cruz eligible, on balance.
