Great article, thank you for posting.
As the author, I thank you. Although it does get lots of reads, words are greatly appreciated.
US v. Wong Kim Ark was a travesty, and Fuller's opinion one of the finest pieces of legal research I've ever read. Yet such cannot be determinative. No legal opinion can cover all of life's contingencies, nor encompass all that might come. The fallacy of stare decisis is that applicability as a matter of advice should not by itself compel.
Personally, I like handling these questions to expose their fallacies by thought experiment. Consider the following "cases":
A pregnant citizen comes to a US hospital, delivers, and goes back to another country, to raise the child there. While that child would be legally "natural born," he or she would hardly satisfy the purpose of the distinction. And here is where I get to the point (one of the reasons I am very glad I never became a lawyer):
Hence, whether or not Ted Cruz is legally a natural born citizen, he is obviously justly so, which is why all the conniptions are such an annoying distraction devolved to the level of technicality.