Natural-Born Citizen

Article II, Section 1 requires the President — and, by the Twelfth Amendment, the Vice President — to be a “natural born Citizen,” a phrase the Constitution never defines. In practice, it has always been understood to include anyone who was a U.S. citizen at the moment of birth, not only people born within the fifty states. That covers children born abroad to U.S. citizen parents under federal citizenship statutes, not just children born on U.S. soil.

The clause has become a real political flashpoint several times without the Supreme Court ever resolving it on the merits. In 2008, Senator John McCain’s eligibility was questioned because he was born in the Panama Canal Zone to two U.S. citizen parents stationed there with the military; the Senate passed a non-binding resolution declaring him natural-born, and no court ever ruled on the underlying question. In 2016, Senator Ted Cruz’s eligibility was challenged in multiple lawsuits because he was born in Calgary, Canada, to a U.S. citizen mother; every case was dismissed, mostly on standing grounds, without reaching the constitutional question. The “birther” campaign questioning President Obama’s eligibility was different in kind — it disputed the underlying fact of where he was born (Hawaii), not the legal meaning of the clause, and was repeatedly disproven by his released birth certificate.

Common misconception: many people assume “natural born citizen” means “born inside the United States,” full stop. That has never been the operating understanding — citizenship acquired automatically at birth through a citizen parent, regardless of where the birth occurred, has consistently been treated by Congress and by most scholars as satisfying the clause. The Supreme Court, however, has never definitively ruled on the term’s precise outer boundaries, since no case has ever reached it on the merits.