You'll be hard pressed to find a Con law professor at a major law school who has an opinion much different than his.
Yes, and 30,000 Frenchmen can’t be wrong, right?
Someone interested in the meaning of NBC ought to take the time to read this opinion from 1844 - LONG before anyone was an “Obamabot”!
(page 246)
And the constitution itself contains a direct recognition of the subsisting common law principle, in the section which defines the qualification of the President. “No person except a natural born citizen, or a citizen of the United States at the time of the adoption of this constitution, shall be eligible to the office of President,” &c. The only standard which then existed, of a natural born citizen, was the rule of the common law, and no different standard has been adopted since. Suppose a person should be elected President who was native born, but of alien parents, could there be any reasonable doubt that he was eligible under the constitution? I think not.
(pg 250)
6. Upon principle, therefore, I can entertain no doubt, but that by the law of the United States, every person born within the dominions and allegiance of the United States, whatever were the situation of his parents, is a natural born citizen.
http://tesibria.typepad.com/whats_your_evidence/Lynch_v_Clarke_1844_ocr.pdf
The entire decision is a long read, but better thought out and documented than the Wong Kim Ark decision.
Are you saying that they know more about what was meant by the phrase in question than John Marshall, Joseph Story, Chief Justice Waite, Justice Livingston, St. George Tucker and Daniel Ramsay? I take it you would argue that their authority as to what was meant is greater than that of the individuals just named and the others of that day who were of the same opinion such as John Jay? I would respectfully disagree and find it arrogantly and unjustifiably presumptuous. I don’t think that you or such constitutional law professors are on an equal footing with any of those just named. I note that Professor Rice of Notre Dame agrees with me.
This is the old strict-construction-versus-living-document issue. While it might be true that most law schools tend to be dominated by liberal professors who fall into the living document camp, they should all at least give lip service to the alternative viewpoint, if only because there is a significant amount of legal theory and precedent that favors the strict constructionist camp (yes?) (IANAL...).