I think that if there is a question, and obviously there is, NBC should be defined unambiguously. NOW!
It's not just Waite. He was joined by all of the Supreme Court justices in his decision. Second, it's not necessarily that he's disagreeing with authorities, because some of them may have been correct, such as those referring to their own state laws. What Waite is doing is explaining exactly what the nomenclature of the founders was. The lengths "some authorites" go to is not strong enough to make anyone a citizen without resolving doubts. As proposed by Waite, the only way to solve those doubts is to a) go by the relevant statutory laws; b) apply the 14th amendment to those it would apply to; or c) determine whether the parents were citizens or not. If the criteria of c is met, then the child was a natural-born citizen, but not so for a and b. How much clearer does that definition have to be??