I didn’t complete my copy and paste for the whole picture on NBC:
- The Constitution’s flexibility - to allow for adapting to new situations and circumstances without the need for amendments, as much as would be possible.
- The Constitution’s inflexibility - to legally enshrine some principles and practices in order to protect them from capricious law-changing.
- Natural-born citizen clause - to protect the country from Presidents with allegiances to other nations.
- By the full conscientious choice of the Constitution writers, NBC was enshrined in the Constitution along with other rules for Presidential eligibility, but NBC itself was NOT legally defined.
- Where the Constitution left off on NBC, Presidential eligibility and candidates’ fitness for office, included their allegiances, elected officials and the public took over - elected officials to complete the law, which might change, and the public, both in electing the officials and in scrutinizing the Presidential candidates.
It seems likely to me that the court system will continue to avoid this as a “political question” so in a sense you are probably right. But . . . it is then left up to us voters to decide for ourselves how we want to interpret that, and for me, I think it’s clear that they were looking to prevent people with potential secret foreign allegiances by virtue of their birth. In that sense, I do think the Vattel definition (born on the soil, to parents who are both U.S. citizens) is the definition that most forecloses the possibility of divided allegiances.