You are also entitled to your own private vocabulary but that doesn’t alter the fact that in the larger context, the English, then the British then the American judicial systems are based on precedent.
I guess you don’t see the Constitution as written as precedential since that word is “obscene” to you. I guess that makes you one of those “constitution as a living document-types.” Originalism is about adhering to precedent.
“The Commentaries on the Laws of England are an influential 18th-century treatise on the common law of England by Sir William Blackstone, originally published by the Clarendon Press at Oxford, 1765–1769. The work is divided into four volumes, on the rights of persons, the rights of things, of private wrongs and of public wrongs.
The Commentaries were long regarded as the leading work on the development of English law and played a role in the development of the American legal system. They were in fact the first methodical treatise on the common law suitable for a lay readership since at least the Middle Ages. The common law of England has relied on precedent more than statute and codifications and has been far less amenable than the civil law, developed from the Roman law, to the needs of a treatise. The Commentaries were influential largely because they were in fact readable, and because they met a need. The work is as much an apologia for the legal system of the time as it is an explanation; even when the law was obscure, Blackstone sought to make it seem rational, just, and inevitable that things should be how they were.
The Commentaries are often quoted as the definitive pre-Revolutionary source of common law by United States courts. Opinions of the Supreme Court of the United States quote from Blackstone’s work whenever they wish to engage in historical discussion that goes back that far, or farther (for example, when discussing the intent of the Framers of the Constitution). The book was famously used as the key in Benedict Arnold’s book cipher, which he used to communicate secretly with his conspirator John André during their plot to betray the Continental Army during the American Revolution.”—Wikipedia
Unlike you, I do not lump 535 members of Congress and the entire U.S. judiciary together as “ignorant” just because they don’t agree with my position on an issue. I think THAT is ignorant.
They are ignorant because they simply buy in to the common legal opinion, which is itself a byproduct of previous legal opinions that have been misrepresented as to intent and scope.
The Wong Kim Ark decision is not wrong if looked at in the right (minimalist) light. The idea that it justifies anchor babies and birth tourists is exactly wrong. Wong Kim Ark never went that far.
But that is the common opinion. It is ignorant, and it is wrong, and all 535 members who hold it are also wrong. If the nine justices of the Supreme court hold that opinion, they too are wrong. It is objectively wrong, but thanks to misinterpreted precedent, a large majority believe this wrong thing to be true.