John Marshall thought it was defined, in The Venus, 12 U.S. 253, and referred the nation to Vattel’s Law of Nations. Secretary Michael Chertoff seemed to think there was a definition, and so stated in his comment appended to Senate Res. 511. in 2008 John Bingham thought it was defined, and his repetition of the Vattel definition is in the Congressional Record (I think its 1867, but I'm too lazy to look it up again).
It depends upon what the meaning of is is. Associations between the symbols and definitions (I refer to “natural born citizen” as a symbol) must be made somewhere. If made in more than one place, there can be confusion. But about “natural born citizen” according to Bingham, there has never been doubt. John Marshall and many many others in court proceedings have pointed to Vattel’s Law of Nations as our common law. That can be argued, but the citations are there. Certainly, when we organized not under a crown but under a constitution, the British Common Law was not our principal dictionary. Marshall and Bingham were explicit about Vattel as the source for the definition. Can you find any other definition available to our founders of “natural born citizen?” Blackstone defines natural born subject, but clearly, a U.S. citizen is different from a British subject.
The USSC, if it does its job, will have to clarify this because there are so many willing to dismiss the precedent.
I have read many of the legal briefs proposing an amendment to the definition. The latest was floated by Oren Hatch in 2005 or 2006, to try to make Scharzenegger eligible. I've read that there have been more than 24 attempts to change it. Most people want to allow foreign born, like McCain, to be included. The frequent justification is that we are now a globalist world. Some, like Sarah Herlihy, claim we are racist, and inherently suspicious of foreigners. Obama is the poster boy for why ignoring our founders is perilous, with a non-citizen Marxist Muslim father, who could have cared less if the US were attacked - as long as he wasn't there.
Let’s say the question of eligibility goes to the Supreme Court. Would Judge Sotomayor have to recuse herself? After all, it was Obama who nominated her.
Many of the above are making an error in logic. Within the overall class: Citizen they assert there are 3 sub-classes (1) Natural-Born Citizen, (2) Citizen, ans (3) Naturalized Citizen. This gives rise to the following logical arguments:
If a Citizen, then a Citizen (True)
If a Citizen, then a Citizen (False)
There is no way to reconcile this.
The Founding Fathers were all well versed in Logic which was part of the classical education.
The correct structure is: The overall class, Citizen contains 2 sub-classes: (1) Natural-Born Citizen, and (2) Naturalized Citizen. The 14th Amendment states that all persons born on US soil are citizens with no reference to the citizenship of parents. This leads to the conclusion that these Citizens are Natural-Born or Naturalized. The conclusion is obvious: Natural-Born.