The Constitution is senior to the courts and court rulings. Men in black robes and small groups of representatives in marble halls can decide that a thing does not mean what most men agree is the common understanding. They can issue paper rulings and bills which seek to overturn the basic agreements among the citizens, but these things will never hold if they lack the consent of the governed.
This is the area of disagreement that we now find ourselves in. Most Americans believe that what the Framers set forth in our Constitution means what it says, and they desire for our government to respect those simple agreements and understandings.
That none of them seem willing lift a finger to uphold their oaths of office to protect and defend our Constitution, is a cause for major disquiet and uneasiness among the people. This distress can't be forever bought off and quelled by edicts, statutes, findings, obfuscations, evasions, and deliberate subversions.
At some point, the people will tire of endlessly seeking redress, and finding nothing but rebuff. They will demand that those charged with administering our Constitutional republic adhere to our Founding Charter, or abdicate their positions in government. If that demand is not complied with, the people will be left with no other choice but to eject those who are willfully violating the common agreements which bind us.
That's pretty much the bottom line.
Birthers & Indiana
“Most Americans believe that what the Framers set forth in our Constitution means what it says...”
From the Indiana Court:
The Wong Kim Ark Court explained:
“The fundamental principle of the common law with regard to English nationality was birth within the allegiance-also called ‘ligealty’, ‘obedience’, ‘faith’, or ‘power-of the king’. The principle embraced all persons born within the king’s allegiance, and subject to his protection. Such allegiance and protection were mutual, - as expressed in the maxim, “Protectio trahit subjectionem, et subjectio protectionem”, - and were not restricted to natural-born subjects and naturalized subjects, or to those who had taken an oath of allegiance; but were predicable of aliens in amity, so long as they were within the kingdom. Children, born in England, of such aliens, were therefore natural-born subjects. But the children, born within the realm, of foreign ambassadors, or the children of alien enemies, born during and within their hostile occupation of part of the king’s dominions, were not natural-born subjects, because not born within the allegiance, the obedience, or the power, or, as would be said at this day, within the jurisdiction, of the king.
This fundamental principle, with these qualifications or explanations of it, was clearly, though quaintly, stated in the leading case known as ‘Calvins Case’, or the ‘Case of the Postnati’, decided in 1608, after a hearing in the exchequer chamber before the lord chancellor and all the judges of England, and reported by Lord Coke and by Lord Ellesmere.
They then give a half dozen citation, one of which they quote:
“Lord Chief Justice Cockburn . . . said: “By the common law of England, every person born within the dominions of the crown, no matter whether of English or of foreign parents, and, in the latter case, whether the parents were settled, or merely temporarily sojourning, in the country, was an English subject, save only the children of foreign ambassadors (who were excepted because their fathers carried their own nationality with them), or a child born to a foreigner during the hostile occupation of any part of the territories of England. No effect appears to have been given to descent as a source of nationality.” Cockb. Nat. 7.”
These were part of common law at the time the Constitution was passed, and thus part of knowing what was meant.
The Indiana Court goes on:
“It thus clearly appears that by the law of England for the last three centuries, beginning before the settlement of this country, and continuing to the present day, aliens, while residing in the dominions possessed by the crown of England, were within the allegiance, the obedience, the faith or loyalty, the protection, the power, and the jurisdiction of the English sovereign; and therefore every child born in England of alien parents was a natural-born subject, unless the child of an ambassador or other diplomatic agent of a foreign state, or of an alien enemy in hostile occupation of the place where the child was born.
III. The same rule was in force in all the English colonies upon this continent down to the time of the Declaration of Independence, and in the United States afterwards, and continued to prevail under the constitution as originally established.13”
http://www.in.gov/judiciary/opinions/pdf/11120903.ebb.pdf
Now, if you want to know why birthers get their butts handed to them in Court, the Court goes on to explain:
“The Plaintiffs do not mention the above United States Supreme Court authority in their complaint or brief; they primarily rely instead on an eighteenth century treatise and quotations of Members of Congress made during the nineteenth century. To the extent that these authorities conflict with the United States Supreme Court’s interpretation of what it means to be a natural born citizen, we believe that the Plaintiffs’ arguments fall under the category of “conclusory, non-factual assertions or legal conclusions” that we need not accept as true when reviewing the grant of a motion to dismiss for failure to state a claim.”
In other words, you cannot build a court case out of random writings. You need to look at the law in effect at the time, and as decided in court cases during the tears since.