See P. 25 of the PDF for the punch line. Basically, they point out that your friend Gray was entirely wrong to invoke English Common Law in Ark as it relies on Feudalism, and the United States is founded on the rejection of that system of slavery. To wit:
Such remnants of feudalism were rejected by our nation’s founders, when they declared to a candid world that they no longer owed allegiance to the king of their birth. They were rejected again by the Congress in 1866, and by the nation when it ratified the Fourteenth Amendment. Hamdi’s case presents this Court with the opportunity to reject them once and for all, and to repudiate the erroneous decision of Wong Kim Ark that revived that forgotten doctrine to the detriment of the American republican ideal of go vernment by consent.
Using Wong Kim Ark to make a point is somewhat questionable.
Ed Meese? You mean the guy who wrote this:
““Under the longstanding English common-law principle of jus soli, persons born within the territory of the sovereign (other than children of enemy aliens or foreign diplomats) are citizens from birth. Thus, those persons born within the United States are “natural born citizens” and eligible to be President. Much less certain, however, is whether children born abroad of United States citizens are “natural born citizens” eligible to serve as President …”In United States v. Wong Kim Ark (1898), the Supreme Court relied on English common law regarding jus soli to inform the meaning of “citizen” in the Fourteenth Amendment as well as the natural-born-citizenship requirement of Article II, and noted that any right to citizenship through jus sanguinis was available only by statute, and not through the Constitution. ”