Personally, >I< prefer strict Constitutional interpretation as written.
However, I think it’s fair to say, The Constitution was not emphatically exactly precise on the issue of soil vs jurisdiction.
What about someone born in an embassy overseas?
I just found the issue somewhat interesting. And as I had that notion logged in my noggin, I wanted to find out if it was true, or not.
Evidently it IS true that the Supreme Court has indicated that Congress can declare the definitions & criteria of Natural Born Citizen.
We can fuss but that seems to be reality. Maybe when Trump & GOP take both houses etc. we can put a more emphatic amendment in place.
On the other hand, there may be more important fish to fry—though I think Natural Soil Born Citizenship for President is important.
Though we all know that does NOT guarantee a non-traitor will get in office.
“However, I think it’s fair to say, The Constitution was not emphatically exactly precise on the issue of soil vs jurisdiction.”
If you know what a natural born citizen is (as the founders did), they were exactly precise in their definition. There is no ambiguity there - we’ve just selected to not know it, or not admit it.
“What about someone born in an embassy overseas?”
A couple questions, since I don’t know and haven’t bothered to look it up:
1) Is a US Embassy considered by the US as US soil? If it is, someone born inside an Embassy to US citizen parents would likely be considered “natural born”.
2) Is there a law that says that children born overseas to citizen parents (regardless of inside or outside an embassy) is a US citizen. If so, they aren’t NBC. Keep in mind in all your scenarios that if it requires a law to make them a citizen, they would not have qualified by the definition of the founders.
Lived overseas for 16 years and all Americans (one or both parents) of children born there had to file the birth of their child with the embassy/consulate to get them a US passport. (This was one of the big questions with Cruz - did his mother do that?) In any case, filing the birth with the embassy/consulate was a requirement of a law for them to be US citizens - not NBC, just citizens. This is essentially a naturalization (which is within the purview of Congress), but did not require a naturalization ceremony.
“Evidently it IS true that the Supreme Court has indicated that Congress can declare the definitions & criteria of Natural Born Citizen”
No. They haven’t. They don’t have the power to give someone the ability to change the definition of words in the Constitution. If they could, every generation could change the meaning of everything in the Constitution (again - a “living, breathing” constitution.) All the SC can do is interpret the words, theoretically at least, according to the original meaning. We’ve seen how that works out over time though, and especially recently with traitorous lefty justices/judges.