Not at all. The fact is that your interpretation may be exactly what the founders intended and any court that would interpret it any way other than yours would not be consistent with the founders.
Ahh, but here's the rub. You do need a law degree to be an appeals court judge and it is Lawyers and not historians who get to decide issues like "Is Ted Cruz eligible?"
As a practicing attorney I am very confident that if this issue is heard by Appeals Court Judges or the Supreme Court, they are going to follow the reasoning in that law review article. Why? Because for the most part, judges are lazy and the easiest decision they could make is that if you are born a citizen, you are a natural born citizen. If they have to go beyond that, then they have to write pages and pages of reasoning and quote the founders, and quote Vattel and Cicero and Julius Ceasar and St. Paul and the Beatles.... and that ain't gonna happen.
So if you really really want this issue decided once and for all by the courts, you are going to be sorely disappointed at the end result.
Trump doesn't want the courts deciding this issue for 2 reasons.
1) He wants the issue. He wants people to wonder and argue as to whether or not Ted Cruz is an NBC.
2) He knows he would lose and it would embarrass him.
Carry on.
I am not ignorant of the fact that the courts are not going to rule on what is written in the language of the Constitution, that citizenship means exclusive allegiance to the United States at birth or naturalization as these are the only 2 methods by which citizenship is derived. As Scalia says, to them “it’s water over the damn”.
My purpose for posting is not because I want the courts to rule, it is to wake up the public at large who vote, that they might educate themselves in the law as I have and then place an educated vote.
And for the record, Clarence Thomas is already on the record, recorded on video, that the SCOTUS has no interest in taking any cases on presidential eligibility.
You also may be a lawyer, but obviously not a well educated one because one doesn’t need to go to Vattel or Cicero, etc. because the US Supreme Court has already ruled on ‘natural born’, as recently as 1939. Sure, every one wants to go to WKA, however, WKA was not ruled a ‘natural born’ and when one reads the bloviating opinion of Justice Gray, it is evident that it was WKA’s renunciation of his Chinese citizenship before he left for China that was the deciding factor. WKA’s birth on US soil only made the naturalization process easier as WKA had never lived in China. And the Justice who wrote the opinion in WKA also wrote the opinion in Elk v. Wilkins and in the Elk case, Gray cited Minor v Happersett, and ALL those cases boil down to one pertinent point of law, EXCLUSIVE allegiance to the United States, at birth or naturalization. WKA was a native, he was not a natural born because of the allegiance factor at birth.
The 14th as it is written in the statutes at large: “Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That all persons born in the United States and not subject to any foreign power”
In which ruling of the court in Elk v Wilkins, written by Justice Gray stated, ““[t]he phrase, ‘subject to its jurisdiction’ was intended to exclude from its operation children of ministers, consuls, and citizens or subjects of foreign States born within the United States.†... and ... “The persons declared to be citizens are “all persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof.†The evident meaning of these last words is not merely subject in some respect or degree to the jurisdiction of the United States, but completely subject to their political jurisdiction and owing them direct and immediate allegiance. And the words relate to the time of birth in the one case, as they do to the time of naturalization in the other. Persons not thus subject to the jurisdiction of the United States at the time of birth cannot become so afterwards except by being naturalized, either individually, as by proceedings under the naturalization acts, or collectively, as by the force of a treaty by which foreign territory is acquired.”
So please, refrain from throwing your, “I’m a lawyer” out there as if you have more authority to interpret the law than I do, a lay person who is self educated and better off because I wasn’t indoctrinated with the liberal ‘British Blackstone” bull$hit that you were. I prefer Wilson, Story & Tucker, the men who actually took part in the drafting & ratifying of the Constitution and who actually wrote commentaries on American jurisprudence for free citizens who are no longer ‘subjects’ of British jurisprudence.
To conclude, I do agree with you on Trump, I too believe that he is merely using the eligibility issue as a political tool. I wasn’t born yesterday, I want to vote for the Constitution, however, its representative has not yet announce his candidacy.