All legal authority in this country is derived from the Constitution, not de-facto acceptance by the people. The people will accept many things if they are uninformed about the constitutionality of such. Acceptance, or rather inaction, doesn't provide legal authority.
In this case, concerning the meaning of “natural born”, we have a consensus permitting Obama his qualification.
There was no consensus that permitted Obama's qualification. The failure of public officials to demand and examine Obama's credentials does not constitute a consensus. The failure of law enforcement to catch a criminal and the lack of public outcry regarding the crime doesn't constitute a consensus that there was no crime.
In the face of that, its very unlikely that any court is going to take this case.
If and when the courts are presented with a properly constructed case that presents a question of first impression and meets the legal requirements of standing and subject matter jurisdiction, they'll hear the case. To date, no such case has been presented.
And even if one did, to define the law, they would still not find against this consensus.
There is no consensus. The courts will rule according to the proper interpretation of the law, not according to popular opinion. If the courts ruled according to consensus, they either wouldn't have intervened in Bush v. Gore or they'd have ruled in Gore's favor.
The public has the basic facts, sufficient to this case - mother American, born in the USA
Those are hardly the basic facts and they are less than sufficient to make a determination regarding Obama's natural-born status. Those are simply the facts on which Obama wants the discussion to be focused.
You hold that this situation is unconstitutional.
Wrong. I hold that this situation is unsettled in the law and therefore requires a SCOTUS ruling. Yes, it is my personal opinion in light of my own research on the issue that Obama is ineligible, but if the SCOTUS ruled that he were eligible, I would accept the ruling. Likewise if we held a Constitutional Convention to remove the natural-born requirement and the states ratified the amendment, I would also accept that decision.
The South’s practices were legal.
Yes, until those practices were seen as immoral and unethical and ultimately overturned. Consensus didn't make those practices right.
Er, if there is no law on the matter, as there isn’t, then we have consensus.
Acceptance is de facto legal authority. If the courts will not take such a case (and they won’t, no matter how you contruct this case), if the authorities will ignore it, if the politicians won’t act, and if the people don’t care, where is the authority that will oppose the consensus ? There is no higher authority that you can appeal to.
“Those are hardly the basic facts “
As far as the public is concerned, they are. What are they missing, citations from some eighteenth-century legal scholar ?