Sunday, February 05, 2012

Georgia Administrative Law Judge Rejects Claim That President Obama Isn’t a ...

This won't settle it, of course.


via The Volokh Conspiracy by Eugene Volokh on 2/5/12

This is the litigation I mentioned when the judge allowed it to go forward earlier this year; the judge has now ruled on the merits that the fact that President Obama's father wasn't a U.S. citizen doesn't keep President Obama from being a natural-born citizen: Anyone born in the U.S., with narrow exceptions (such as that for the children of diplomats) is a U.S. citizen from birth, and therefore a natural-born citizen.
I'm not an expert on this area of the law, but the Georgia judge's reasoning, which echoes the reasoning of a 2009 Indiana Court of Appeals decision strikes me as quite persuasive, as does the much more detailed reasoning in a Nov. 2011 Congressional Research Service report, which reaches the same result.
UPDATE: I originally accidentally omitted the link to the Georgia administrative judge's ruling — I've now added it above.

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