As can be seen from reading these threads concerning NBC, there are differing opinions..some seemingly more well-reasoned and better supported than others. But the fact remains that there is NOT agreement among legal/constitutional scholars.
Thus, as is quite apparent, this issue will remain “unsettled” until the USSC eventually settles it.
It may be unsettled in your mind, but just because this issue has not come before the Supreme Court does NOT mean that it is incapable of normal understanding or is that it is unsettled unsettled in its language and usage, or that the Framers did not know what they were saying or doing.
We do not need to sit by like inanimate lumps waiting for the Supreme Court to “settle” things. We can educate ourselves on the history of the Untied States, and specifically on the matter of the Constitution of the United States, and it’s history and meaning. We can take the matter into our hands.
We can make the effort to understand the Constitution, and we can follow it as it is meant to be followed, and we can do it all without the need of “priestly” guidance.
I think that it is of paramount importance to the future of our Constitutional republic that we do exactly that.
If we were to adopt your rationale - that we need to wait for the Supreme Court to “settle” the issue - then we as a nation would have to wait until a usurper is elected and installed as President, then find someone with “standing” who can manage to get the case heard in a Federal court, then spend million of dollars and years of precious time while the case works through the appeals process, meanwhile standing by watching the usurper do untold damage. THAT would be the price of taking the passive path you recommend.
OH, Wait! Gee, I guess we are already paying that price!
And why? Because too many have taken the view that preserving, protecting and defending the Constitution of the United States is SOMEBODY ELSE’s job.
Wake up people! It is OUR job! WE are the SOVEREIGNS! It is OUR job!
It is OUR job.
“But the fact remains that there is NOT agreement among legal/constitutional scholars.”
Legal/constitutional scholars agree that native-born citizens are natural-born citizens, potentially eligible to be president. The doubts are about foreign-born children of citizens.
“It is clear enough that native-born citizens are eligible and that naturalized citizens are not. The recurring doubts relate to those who have acquired United States citizenship through birth abroad to American parents.” [Charles Gordon, Who Can Be President of the United States: The Unresolved Enigma, 28 Md. L. Rev. 1, 19 (1968).]
“It is well settled that ‘native-born’ citizens, those born in the United States, qualify as natural born. It is also clear that persons born abroad of alien parents, who later become citizens by naturalization, do not. But whether a person born abroad of American parents, or of one American and one alien parent, qualifies as natural born has never been resolved.” [Jill Pryor, ‘The Natural-Born Citizen Clause and Presidential Eligibility’, 97 Yale Law Journal 881-889 (1988).]
Long ago the eligibility of native-born children of foreigners may have been questionable, about births before the 14’th Amendment, but in our time there was no argument until the long-dead theory got dug up to use against Barack Obama. I’ve pointed this out before, and I’ve learned what reactions to expect. One thing that never happens is anyone citing a counter-example. Maybe this time will be different.