The authorities cited were Charles Gordon, "Who can be President of the United States; the Unresolved Enigma," 28 Mn. L. Rev. 1 (1968); Jack Maskell, "Qualifications for President and the 'Natural Born' Citizenship Eligibility Requirement" Cong. Research Serv. R42097 (2001); and Paul Clement & Neal Katyal, "On the Meaning of 'Natural Born Citizen'," 128 Harv. L. Rev. 161 (2015).
The judge also referred to Breckinridge Long, "A 'Natural Born Citizen' Within the Meaning of the Constitution," 49 Chi. Legal News 146 (1916), which argues quite well that a person born in the US to alien parents is NOT a natural born citizen (this would apply to Rubio); Gabriel J. Chin, "Why senator John McCain cannot Be President: Eleven Months and a Hundred Yards short of Citizenship," 107 Mich. L. Rev. First Impressions 1, upp A at 19-21 (2008); and Isidor Blum, "Is Gov. George Romney Eligible To Be President?" N.Y.L.J., Oct. 16, 1967. None of those references was applied.
The judge did note Mary McManamon, "The Natural Born Citizen Clause as Originally Understood," 64 Cath. U.L. Rev. 317 (2015), but concluded that her view is in the minority among legal scholars.
The judge includes statutory history of naturalization laws to support his conclusion that all citizens at birth are natural born citizens. While he doesn't make note of it, it is a fact that US statutory law makes children of two non-citizen parents, born in Guam, Puerto Rico or the Virgin Islands, US citizens at birth.
On the question of whether or not the court had jurisdiction, the opinion cites Miller v. Albright and Wong Kim Ark, and also points to Hall v. Florida, 134 S.Ct. 1986 (2014) for the proposition that "No natural born citizen may be denaturalized." That statement is a summary of the rule of Trop v. Dulles, 356 US 86 (1958).
Seeing as how the denaturalization of Mr. Bellei in Rogers v. Bellei was upheld (Bellei was born in Italy of a US Citizen mother, and obtained US citizenship under the direct predecessor Act of Congress that provides Cruz with his US citizenship), there is no question that if a court were to faithfully apply the principle stated in Hall v. Florida, in combination with Mr. Bellei being constitutionally denaturalized, it would find that Mr. Bellei, a citizen at birth, can not be a natural born citizen.
With regard to children born in territories (e.g., Guam): The Congress decides. They could be “U.S. Nationals” and NOT citizens. They could be citizens.
Acts of Congress making persons born there U.S. citizens at birth:
P.R. - 1917
U.S. Virgin Islands - 1927
Guam - 1950
In some cases, the law or subsequent laws made the provision retroactive to a prior date. Similar laws at one time pertained to Alaska and Hawaii. The Panama Canal Zone was never an incorporated territory, so citizenship at birth was only transmitted by lineage, not by place.
The rule is (or should be) this: are the destinies of that place and the U.S. sufficiently intertwined. Clearly, we and the people of P.R. are not so intertwined to be a common people. But, many Puerto Ricans serve in the armed forces and in other ways evidence shared interests and values.
Bellei is not on point. Bellei did not comply with the law, Cruz has in every specific. The devil is as always in the details. Too bad for you; wrong yet again.