The Founders did not intend that the Constitution that they drafted would be so complicated and convoluted that the average person would not understand it.
What do YOU believe the Founders meant by the phrase "natural born citizen"?
It should be pretty obvious that the Founders never wished to see our Commander-in-Chief having difficulty with divided loyalties. What other reason could there be?
Now consider from where such divided loyalties might come. Would a President be conflicted should the time ever come that the interests of the United States conflicted with the interests of the President's mother? Of course he would.
Similarly, the President would be conflicted it the interests of his father conflicted with the interests of the nation.
Now ask yourself, would our Founders have deemed it sufficient that only one of the President's parents be a U.S. citizen? Would the possible conflicts of interests be so reduced by having one U.S. citizen parent, that the Founders would accept having one parent of the President be a foreign citizen? Or would it make more sense that both sources of conflict be eliminated?
Why would you need the Supreme Court to explain this to you?
The purpose of Article II, Sec. 1 Clause 5 was to minimize the likelihood of undue foreign influence being trasmitted to the office of POTUS by his parents, PARTICULARLY by a father owing allegiance to an alien sovereignty. From Emmerich de Vattel and the Law of Nations fromwhich the framers derived the meaningof NBC and note the last sentence:
“The natives, or natural-born citizens, are those born in the country, of parents who are citizens. As the society can not exist and perpetuate itself otherwise than by the children of the citizens, those children naturally follow the condition of their fathers, and succeed to all their rights. The society is supposed to desire this, in consequence of what it owes to its own preservation; and it is presumed, as a matter of course, that each citizen, on entering into society, reserves to his children the right of becoming members of it. THE COUNTRY OF THE FATHERS IS THEREFORE THAT OF THE CHILDREN.”
Why would you need the Supreme Court to explain this to you?
“What do YOU believe the Founders meant by the phrase “natural born citizen”? “
Since the phrase “Natural Born Subject” was a very well known legal phrase, and since it was used interchangeably with NBC for some time AFTER the Constitution, then it seems likely they thought the meanings were largely interchangeable as well...
Unfortunately, a natural born subject included those born of alien parents. This all was explained in detail in a Supreme Court decision in the late 1800s.
Because before the Supreme Court renders a decision there would be many billable hours for our most honest lawyer class.