I read the decision. It reads to me as if the plaintiff had people offering expert testimony who did not meet the legal definition of "experts", so their testimony that the documents were forged/faked was given no weight. That is not unusual.
When you get down to the core NBC issue, the court faced it squarely. It noted that the phrase "natural-born citizen" was not defined in the Constitution, so it looked to normal legal principles of the time to determine how it was likely understood.
So the Court had to decide what would have been the most commonly understood meaning of that phrase at that time. It noted that English Common law was the default rule in the colonies, so it credited the English common law rule of "jus solis" (place of birth), over the continental, De Vattel rule of "jus sanguinas" (citizenship of parents). In essence, the determination that our legal tradition was founded in the English common law, not Contintental law, compelled the conclusion that if you're born in the U.S., you're an NBC.
Historically, that's almost impossible to argue. For example, the citizenship of the colonists themselves was determined by English common law. You were a subject of the King if you were born in a British colony. To assume they would have discarded the rule with which they were all familiar, and which applied to all the colonists themselves, in favor of another definition that had never applied in the colonies, without making that unusual choice explicit in the text of the Constitution, doesn't make much sense.
That's what it really all boils down to. English common law was the basis of our legal system, and continental law was not. You can disagree with that, and think it is a stupid thing to do, but you can't credibly argue that's not a fair interpretation of our legal history.
Trouble is, Wong Kim Ark didn’t use the common law in effect at the time of the writing of the Constitution, but what the court cherry-picked from recent rulings in Britain without any support from documentation of the American Revolutionary period.
What is ridiculous is that the probative value of the testimony that was rushed through was found faulty but the probative value of an online image was not found faulty.
The other issue that it seems Hatfield may take up is who has the burden of proof. It is not up to the plaintiffs to prove that Obama is ineligible, but up to Obama to prove that he IS eligible. How can he do that without presenting ANYTHING? I’m afraid Hatfield and Irion have shot themselves in the foot by presenting the online image as if it could be probative, but we’ll see what happens on appeal, I guess.
This problem is more than likely not going to be solved in the courts because they are too badly compromised. That’s why the retired military guys told Lakin to not push the issue. They’d get bad results from a compromised system.
If we’re going to get relief from this fraud it’s gonna have to come through law enforcement - in a CRIMINAL trial, where expert witnesses are presented, the investigation includes subpoenas, etc.
I would grant that the Founders, many of whom were attorneys, understood citizenship before the Revolution in terms of English law, under which Acts of Parliament overrode common law traditions. Unlike the author of the Arkeny decision, or Judge Malihi, they would have been aware of the British Nationality Acts of 1730 and 1772, both of which bestow status as “natural born subjects” to the offspring of natural born subject FATHERS (not parents, not mothers — the sexist pigs stipulated FATHERS). English law regarding citizenship as the Founders would have understood it serves much better for denying Obama American nbc status than granting it. (I realize that internet discussion will change nothing about this farce, and I agree with most of your post. I just find the recourse to common law to be inapplicable).