Can Your Adopted Chinese-Born Child Grow Up to Be President?

I think so, even though it’s not obviously consistent with the requirement restricting presidential eligibility to “natural born” citizens.  I make the case in this essay, just posted as part of a symposium on McCain’s constitutional eligibility (in light of his Canal Zone birth) at the Michigan Law Review’s online First Impressions (with other contributions from Jack Chin, Larry Solum, Daniel Tokaji, and Stephen Sachs).  My argument: McCain has clearly been deemed eligible by a nonjudicial constitutional consensus (Jack’s powerful argument to the contrary notwithstanding), even before the prospect of President Palin created extreme circumstantial incentives for the result.  

The episode sets a precedent for relaxing the “natural born” threshold in other permutations, including those born abroad to nonmilitary US citizens (think Obama as born in Kenya); foreign adopted children of US citizens (not born citizens, but automatically naturalized upon adoption); and even the derivatively naturalized children of immigrant parents.  That’s the more likely route to chipping away at this silly qualification, not through the courts or through formal  constitutional amendment.