Former Sen. Rick Santorum (R-PA) on Wednesday said that fellow Republican presidential candidate Sen. Ted Cruz’s (R-TX) insistence that his eligibility to run for president is “settled law” is misleading.
“Look, I have read a lot about this, and here is what I would say: The statement of Sen. Cruz that this is settled law is inaccurate. It is not settled law,” Santorum told reporters in Iowa, according to the Des Moines Register. “The Supreme Court has not ruled on it. This is an area for the Supreme Court to rule. You know me, I am not a big Supreme Court lover, but on this type of issue, this is a clear interpretation that the Supreme Court is, in fact, the body that would weigh in and make this decision.”
Since Donald Trump questioned whether Cruz is eligible to run for president given that he was born in Canada, numerous Republican lawmakers have joined the skepticism.
Cruz has insisted that since his mother was an American citizen, granting him citizenship at birth, he is “natural born citizen,” a requirement for being president.
“As a legal matter, the question is quite straightforward and settled law that the child of a U.S. citizen born abroad is a natural born citizen. People will continue to make political noise about it but as a legal matter it is quite straightforward,” Cruz said earlier this month.
But some legal scholars point out that the U.S. Constitution’s definition of “natural born citizen” has not been clearly defined.
