Attorney Apuzzo Files Petition With NJ Supreme Court in NJ Obama Ballot Challenge
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Purpura and Moran File Petition for Certification With
the NJ Supreme
Court in Obama NJ Ballot Challenge
By Mario Apuzzo, Esq. | July 2,
2012
Today, I filed on behalf of my clients, Nicholas E. Purpura and Theodore T. Moran, a Petition for Certification with the New Jersey Supreme Court. The petition may be read here: http://www.scribd.com/doc/98923880/Purpura-Moran-Petition-for-Certification-FILED-7-2-12 .
In the petition, we argue that the Administrative Law Judge, whose opinion was adopted by the Secretary of State and affirmed by the Appellate Division, erred in allowing candidate Barack Obama to be placed on the ballot for the primary and general election and to run for office in New Jersey without provided any evidence to the New Jersey Secretary of State showing his identity or where he was born, when challenged to do so.
We argue that, in light of Obama conceding that the State of New Jersey has no evidence of his identity or place of birth, including the 2011 internet image of his alleged birth certificate, the ALJ had absolutely no evidence before him upon which to base his finding that Obama was born in Hawaii.
We also argue that the ALJ misapplied Article II, Section 1, Clause 5, the Fourteenth Amendment, Minor v. Happersett, 88 U.S. 162 (1875), and United States v. Wong Kim Ark, 169 U.S. 649 (1898), all which he used to find that Obama is a “natural born Citizen.” Article II, Section 1, Clause 5 provides that if one was born before the adoption of the Constitution, one could be a “Citizen of the United States” and be eligible to be President. But it also provides that for all those born after the adoption of the Constitution, one must be a “natural born Citizen” to be eligible to be President. That means that today, anybody who is just a “citizen of the United States” and not a “natural born Citizen” is not eligible to be President.
The Founders and Framers had good reason for including the “natural born Citizen” clause into the Constitution and requiring that future Presidents have that birth status. St. George Tucker tells us why the Founders and Framers used the “natural born Citizen” clause as a requirement of presidential eligibility:
“That provision in the constitution which requires that the president shall be a native-born citizen (unless he were a citizen of the United States when the constitution was adopted,) is a happy means of security against foreign influence, which, wherever it is capable of being exerted, is to be dreaded more than the plague. The admission of foreigners into our councils, consequently, cannot be too much guarded against; their total exclusion from a station to which foreign nations have been accustomed to, attach ideas of sovereign power, sacredness of character, and hereditary right, is a measure of the most consummate policy and wisdom.”
George Tucker, Blackstone's Commentaries: with Notes of Reference to the Constitution and Laws of the Federal Government of the United States and of The Commonwealth of Virginia (1803) (Philadelphia: published by William Young Birch and Abraham Small; Robert Carter, Printer, 1803), http://constitution.org/tb/tb2.htm . So we can see that the Founders and Framers used the “natural born Citizen” clause as a national security measure designed to make sure that the President worked only in the best interest of the United States and its republican principles and of no other nation. It was also put in place to keep all vestiges of monarchial rule and influence out of the United States.
The Fourteenth Amendment by its clear text gives the status of a “citizen of the United States” to those born or naturalized in the United States and “subject to the jurisdiction thereof.” It does not give anyone the status of a “natural born Citizen.” When the Founders and Framers inserted the “natural born Citizen” clause in the Constitution, there was no Fourteenth Amendment. Hence, they surely did not write the clause into the Constitution having in mind any citizenship standard that is contained in the Fourteenth Amendment. And there does not exist any evidence that the Fourteenth Amendment repealed or amended the Founders’ and Framers’ definition of an Article II “natural born Citizen.” Hence, Article II, Section 1, Clause 5 and the Fourteenth Amendment stand as two separate and distinct constitutional provisions which provide two different constitutional citizenship standards.
Again, Minor v. Happersett confirmed the American “common-law” definition of a “natural-born citizen,” which Minor said the Founders and Framers were familiar with and used when they wrote the “natural born Citizen” clause. That definition is a child “born in a country of parents who were its citizens.” Id. at 167-68. Minor left open the question of whether a child born “within the jurisdiction” of the United States to alien parents is a “citizen of the United States” under the Fourteenth Amendment. As we have seen, this is a different standard as that which applies to defining a “natural born Citizen.”
Wong Kim Ark answered the single question left open by Minor. It held that Wong, born in the United States to domiciled and resident alien parents who were neither diplomats nor military invaders was born “subject to the jurisdiction” of the United States and therefore a “citizen of the United States” from the moment of birth. The Court’s single task was to interpret and apply the Fourteenth Amendment, not Article II, Section 1, Clause 5. The Court found that Wong’s parents being domiciled and residents (not “citizens”) was enough to give jurisdiction to the United States over them and Wong when Wong was born. Again, since the Fourteenth Amendment neither repealed nor amended Article II, Section 1, Clause 5 “natural born Citizen” clause, Wong defined a “citizen of the United States” under the Fourteenth Amendment, not a “natural born Citizen” under Article II. In fact, Wong’s specific holding uses the phrase “citizen of the United States,” not “natural born Citizen.” Hence, using that amendment to find someone a “citizen of the United States,” regardless of whether that person is a “citizen” from the moment of birth, has no direct bearing on the definition of an Article II “natural born Citizen.” After all, Article II says “natural born Citizen,” not “born Citizen,” and is applied for presidential eligibility. What the Fourteenth Amendment can do with reference to a “natural born Citizen” is increase the pool of parents who become “citizens of the United States” and give birth to “natural born Citizens.”
CONTINUED HERE: http://puzo1.blogspot.com/2012/07/purpura-and-moran-file-petition-for.html
