Did you read anywhere in my essay that I said only an Obama supporter would challenge my position?
Does not common sense tell us that anyone who argues a legal position that supports Obama’s eligibility is also in effect supporting him? We surely cannot say the opposite. And we surely cannot say that the person is neutral. So what is your point?
Your statement about “[m]uch of American law” deriving from English common law adds nothing to addressing the real issue which is did the Framers mean to have national citizenship derive from English common law? Do not tell me about English common law in the States and all that sort of stuff. Address national citizenship.
Your statement about how English common law has been modified also adds nothing. Many of us know that and so what.
Your final opinion about the “most basic principle of citizenship” is just that. Your opinion. You have every right to an opinion. But you are just simply repeating a sound bite without providing any legal support for your position. Moreover, what controls Obama’s eligibility is the correct definition of an Article II “natural born Citizen” not a “citizen.” You are not even addressing the correct issue.
As far as the courts go, we just do not know until we get there.
I have the highest respect for you and your work, but may I modestly suggest (not being a lawyer) that WKA did NOT totally equate NBC and NBS.
Note that in your quote from WKA the Court only equates citizen and subject “to a degree” which is a limitation. The limited equality that WKA specifically cites is not POTUS eligibility (for which there is no common law equivalent) but rather “for we are equally bound by allegiance and subjection to the government and law of the land”:
“‘And if, at common law, all human beings born within the ligeance of the king, and under the king's obedience, were natural-born subjects, and not aliens, I do not perceive why this doctrine does not apply to these United States in all cases in which there is no express constitutional or statute declaration to the contrary.’ ‘Subject’ and ‘citizen’ are, in a degree, convertible terms as applied to natives; and though the term ‘citizen’ seems to be appropriate to republican freemen, yet we are, equally with the inhabitants of all other countries, ‘subjects,’ for we are equally bound by allegiance and subjection to the government and law of the land.’ Id. 258, note.” United States v. Wong Kim Ark, 169 U.S. 649, 664-65 (1898).
WKA states up front that the issue to be decided is whether Wong is a citizen and explicitly states that it will not reach a conclusion as to whether Wong is NBC.
My take is that the entire discussion of common law and Blackstone in WKA is for the sole purpose of informing a ruling as to whether Wong is born a citizen, not whether Wong is NBC eligible to be POTUS.
In my view your quote from WKA only affirms that both citizens and subjects “are equally bound by allegiance and subjection to the government and law of the land”. Neither your quote nor anything in the WKA decision affirms that such limited equality, limited “in a degree” as the Court said, can equate NBS rights with the separate and distinct NBC POTUS eligibility requirement identified by John Jay.
There is no concept of POTUS in common law in relation to a subject so there can be no equivalence or historic analogy between subject and citizen regarding NBC eligibility.
My take is that WKA was correctly decided and affirmed only that Wong was a citizen, not a NBC.