This is where much contention comes into the debate as Vattel merely pulled together & clarified all the laws of nature that had already been written by Cicero, Grotius, Puffendorf, Aristotle, Locke, Hobbes, Hume, Domat, etc. Vattel took the works of all those great men of the enlightenment and brought them together. Most founders & framers, but especially those with higher influence in the drafting such as Wilson, studied ALL of them and had great knowledge of the laws of nature well before Vattel’s edition of the Laws of Nations even came into their possession either in scholastic studies or their personal studies of natural law leading up to the Declaration of Independence because Natural Law was the only law that was suitable for a Religious & Moral Republic. Wilson covers all these great philosophers and their influences in his 1st volume as well as the importance of morality & patriotism.
but I think we are on the same side here in concluding that Obama would likely not be NBC if his legal father is a non-citizen at his birth or if he was born in Kenya.
Sorry to hear you are not feeling well and please don't take my responses as any sort of attack. I know we are on the same side. It's just that I just have done extensive research into this and thus am passionate about getting the record corrected about our history and the foundation of American Law. Might I suggest you read the opinion of Elk v Wilkins ( http://supreme.justia.com/us/112/94/case.html ) written by Gray in 1884 in which Gray held that the phrase ‘subject to the jurisdiction’ meant something more than being born on soil as it pertains to allegiance. This holding in Elk written by Gray, upheld the Dicta in the Slaughterhouse case( http://supreme.justia.com/us/83/36/case.html ) therefore declaring the 14th Amendment to be constitutional. An opinion in which Gray held that the US did not adopt the feudal English common law definition of natural born subject as the definition of US citizen. The reread the rambling and sometimes incoherent opinion in WKA and try to make sense of it. Finally, we have the fact that instead of recusing himself in a later(after WKA)case in which he would personally gain financially from, Gray hid the personal impication of that decision and remained on the bench during the case and voted in favor, therefore sealing his future fortune. This case was later overturned and has remained overturned since.
Leo made a big point out of the fact that Gray was appointed by Chester Arthur and Leo felt that Gray's peculiar change from the Elk case to the Ark case that you pointed out may have been made to lock in citizenship for Arthur who, though born on US soil, had a UK citizen father at birth. Now you are pointing out further evidence that Gray was unscrupulous. Interesting.
Rightly or wrongly, SCOTUS did decide that WKA was at least a citizen based on soil (subject to the jurisdiction of) while explicitly saying they didn't reach the issue of whether he was NBC. The Arkeny Court admitted that even as they seized on the “guidance” in WKA to pronounce Obama to be NBC without proper discovery and with a different fact pattern of sufficiently less US jurisdiction over Obama Sr.
To convince SCOTUS that Obama is not NBC, he must then not only prevail on the facts (the founders intentions) but must overturn the semi-precedent (widely assumed as precedent) of the conceded WKA dicta equating NBC and NBS. With Obama as sitting president, that seems improbable to achieve.
I believe that only a claim by Mario that WKA did NOT equate NBC with NBS and the Court only looked to NBS to inform it of Ark's status as a citizen will have a chance. I also believe this to be true. Just my non-lawyer impression.