Law Professor: McCain Birthplace Question is Bizarre

Is Sen. John McCain eligible to be president under the Constitution? Seems like a silly question, but some folks think there could be a problem because McCain was born in the American-controlled Panama Canal Zone.

Legal scholars are studying the question right now.

``You have to be a natural-born citizen to be eligible for the presidency of the United States," says University of Arizona law professor Jack Chin.

Chin says citizens who emigrated to the U.S. can't run, and for centuries, scholars have debated whether an American born to American parents living abroad are considered natural-born citizens.

Chin has a definite opinion.

``This is a hyper-technicality," he says. ``It's such a bizarre technicality to advance on a serious basis to change the outcome of an election or to shape the course of an election."

Chin doesn't think McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee in November, has anything to worry about. McCain was born outside the U.S. because his father was a career Navy man, who rose to the rank of admiral.

``He was a U.S. citizen at birth and, therefore, I think 999 judges out of a thousand are going to say he's eligible to be president... I would be totally shocked, totally shocked, if this turned into a serious question, because the guy's a natural born citizen."

Nonetheless, the McCain campaign has asked prominent attorney Theodore Olson, a former U.S. Solicitor General, to research the question.

An interesting sidelight to the story. The late Arizona Sen. Barry Goldwater, who ran unsuccessfully for the presidency in 1964, was born in the Old Arizona Territory before Arizona became a state. McCain says the question of eligibility was settled then when the issue went all the way to the Supreme Court.

McCain told reporters Thursday that he doesn't know why his campaign sought legal analysis of whether his birth outside the continental United States might disqualify him from the presidency. McCain's campaign called the legal analysis routine.