The "Natural Born" citizen bill.

[Ravy]

I would think that something that arguably amends the meaning of the Constitution would require a constitutional amendment, not a simple bill.

Also, I am wondering about the impact from all of the people overseas who will now claim their father was a US Servicemen and thus are a natural born citizen. Will they have to prove their citizenship somehow or will it be up to us to prove that they are not?

Certainly for a constitutional law professor to co-sponsor this bill these issues have been fully addressed. I can't see where they were, though.

[Bucky]

1. It doesn't amend, it clarifies a definition & is subject to legislative correction.

Laws like making the Speaker of the House next in line behind the VP or setting the number of SCOTUS justices at nine are also simply construing our flexible Constitution to make it work the way we need it to.

[Ravy]

2. The method for succession is specifically outlined in the 20th amendment.

I am still researching the justification for the number on the supreme court. Interesting point.

[Bucky]

3. True, the 20th specifies that "Congress may by law provide for" succession law...

but long before the 20th, Congress passed laws on who was elevated in case both president and vice president died--sometimes it was the Secretary of State, other times the president pro tem.

The constitution is remarkably silent on the question of how the judicial branch is organized. Basically the Framers got tired of the heat and arguments in the summer of 1787 and left the matter vague so that the first Congress could hammer out the details.

I'm sure there's plenty of other places where legislation and precedence has had to "fill in the gaps" left by the organic law--like when Jefferson bought Louisiana without any clear power to do so (buying stuff was formally the purview of the legislative branch) or when Madison made clear that the Senate could vote to approve the president hiring a cabinet officer but didn't need to vote to approve the same officer being fired by the president (in the Federalist Papers he'd made the exact opposite argument).

[Ravy]

4. I can understand gaps, but I thought constitutional interpretation

was in the domain of the US Supreme Court. I did not think that interpretatons could be defined by law as basically that has the possibility of changing the meaning of the constitution.

But most importantly, I am suspicious of hastily drawn knee-jerk laws that may have unintended consequences. For instance, this law could make a natural born citizen born in a foreign country of someone whose parents were not citizen. It will qualify some for retroactive citizenship even though they were excluded by age in the Immigration and Naturalizaion Laws.