“Your both missing the point that the Court can also order a BC to be opened.....Uhhh I think the SCOTUS would have the power to do that.”
The SCOTUS does not need to order Obama’s birth certificate to be opened to make a decision. Going on what Obama has professed himself, he was born in Hawaii. Great! That means he is a US citizen. But Obama also has professed that his father was from Kenya. Great. Means his daddy was not a US citizen. Obama has also professed that he was a British subject at birth since his father was from Kenya. The birth certificate under seal can stay there. Obama is not a “natural born” citizen because his father was not a US citizen.
Here's some more thoughts to ponder this weekend...
Definitively, there is no definition that applies to "Natural Born Citizen" in the Constitution. Also, the 14th Amendment does apply in this case, as we've discussed here. The full text of the 14th Amendment does not mention the phrase "natural born citizen," nor does it address Presidential qualifications. The phrase "natural born Citizen" is not defined anywhere in the Constitution, as is true with most Constitutional terms.
However, many terms and phrases used by the Framers were derived from William Blackstone's works.
Today, U.S. courts frequently quote Blackstone's Commentaries on the Laws of England as the definitive pre-Revolutionary War source of common law; in particular, the United States Supreme Court quotes from Blackstone's work whenever they wish to engage in historical discussion that goes back that far, or further (for example, when discussing the intent of the Framers of the Constitution).
Blackstone's work has been used most forcefully as of late by Justice Clarence Thomas. U.S. and other common law courts mention with strong approval Blackstone's formulation also known as Blackstone's ratio popularly stated as "Better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer."
Here's a passage from the Blackstone Commentaries. Note than many scholars and US court cases consider "Natural Born Citizen" and "Natural Born Subject" as relatively synonomous:
"The first and most obvious division of the people is into aliens and natural born subjects. Natural-born subjects are such as are born within the dominions of the crown of England, that is, within the allegiance, or as it is generally called, the allegiance of the king; and aliens, such as are born out of it. Allegiance is the tie, or ligament, which binds the subject to the king, in return for that protection which the king affords the subject. The thing itself, or substantial part of it, is founded in reason and the nature of government; the name and the form are derived to us from our Gothic ancestors.
"Allegiance, both express and implied, is however distinguished by the law into two sorts or species, the one natural, the other local; the former being also perpetual, the latter temporary. Natural allegiance is such as is due from all men born within the king’s dominions immediately upon their birth. For, immediately upon their birth, they are under the king’s protection; at a time too, when (during their infancy) they are incapable of protecting themselves.
"When I say, that an alien is one who is born out of the king’s dominions, or allegiance, this also must be understood with some restrictions. The common law indeed stood absolutely so; with only a very few exceptions: so that a particular act of parliament became necessary after the restoration, for the naturalization of children of his majesty’s English subjects, born in foreign countries during the late troubles. And this maxim of the law proceeded upon a general principle, that every man owes natural allegiance where he is born, and cannot owe two such allegiances, or serve two masters, at once.
"Yet the children of the king’s ambassadors born abroad were always held to be natural subjects: for as the father, though in a foreign country, owes not even a local allegiance to the prince to whom he is sent; so, with regard to the son also, he was held (by a kind of postliminium) to be born under the king of England’s allegiance, represented by his father, the ambassador.
"To encourage also foreign commerce, it was enacted by statute 25 Edw. III. st. 2. that all children born abroad, provided both their parents were at the time of the birth in allegiance to the king, and the mother had passed the seas by her husband’s consent, might inherit as if born in England: and accordingly it hath been so adjudged in behalf of merchants.
"But by several more modern statutes these restrictions are still farther taken off: so that all children, born out of the king’s allegiance, whose fathers were natural-born subjects, are now natural-born subjects themselves, to all intents and purposes, without any exception; unless their said fathers were attained, or banished beyond sea, for high treason; or were then in the service of a prince at enmity with Great Britain."
... and Barack Obama, Jr, was a British Citizen from his father at birth... it even says so on his website ...