One of the great virtues of the U.S. judicial system is that it is generally open to all. That is also one of its failings. The latter can lead to abuse. The so-called "birthers' " use of the court system to attempt to prove that Barack Obama is not a "natural born" citizen as required by the Constitution to be president of the United States is a case in point. Their various efforts have been rebuffed, but that hasn't deterred them. They continue to pepper the courts with briefs. Monday's U.S. Supreme Court rejection of the latest request for another hearing should end the "birthers'<2002>" quixotic quest. It probably won't.
The high court rejected without comment a petition from Gregory Hollister, a leading proponent of the "birther" agenda, that it rehear various claims that it had dismissed earlier this year. The petition rejected Monday asked that Justices Sandra Sotomayor and Elena Kagan withdraw from hearing constitutional appeals because their participation would represent a conflict of interest for Ob two Supreme Court appointees. The court's rejection was proper. The claim was without merit.
Seasoned court observers were hardly surprised by the rejection. Many noted that the court did not request a formal government response to the Hollister appeal. Generally, experts say, such a request would be forthcoming if the justices were considering accepting the appeal.
The courts, in fact, consistently have rejected "birther" lawsuits that question the president's citizenship. Obama and his staff willingly provided copies of his birth certificate during the 2008 campaign. The document indicated that the president was born on Aug. 4, 1961, in Honolulu, Hawaii, to a mother who was born in Kansas and to a father who was a native of Kenya. The circumstances of his birth confer U.S. citizenship on the president.
The "birthers" view it differently - and incorrectly. They say, without substantiation, that Obama was born in Indonesia or in Kenya, or that the birth certificate provided by Obama is a fake. Another claim is that because his father was a Kenyan, the president has dual British-American citizenship, which somehow means that he is not the "natural born" citizen the Constitution requires a U.S. president to be. Those claims are insupportable in practice and in law. The judicial system's consistent rejection of all arguments about eligibility since shortly after Obama's election in 2008 that the president's citizenship is bogus surely affirm that.
Even so, the "birthers" and their spurious arguments are unlikely to go away. At least 10 states, including Tennessee and Georgia, have proposed legislation that questions whether Obama was born in the United States. All inexplicably want more proof that he was a "natural born citizen" before his name is put on the 2012 ballot. Given that, it seems almost a certainty that the "birthers" and the judicial system will continue to interact in the future.