As the author, I thank you. Although it does get lots of reads, words are greatly appreciated.
US v. Wong Kim Ark was a travesty, and Fuller's opinion one of the finest pieces of legal research I've ever read. Yet such cannot be determinative. No legal opinion can cover all of life's contingencies, nor encompass all that might come. The fallacy of stare decisis is that applicability as a matter of advice should not by itself compel.
Personally, I like handling these questions to expose their fallacies by thought experiment. Consider the following "cases":
A pregnant citizen comes to a US hospital, delivers, and goes back to another country, to raise the child there. While that child would be legally "natural born," he or she would hardly satisfy the purpose of the distinction. And here is where I get to the point (one of the reasons I am very glad I never became a lawyer):
Hence, whether or not Ted Cruz is legally a natural born citizen, he is obviously justly so, which is why all the conniptions are such an annoying distraction devolved to the level of technicality.
Unfortunately though law is a messy fit to life we cannot decide everything on a case by case basis. Relegating law to the sidelines is a dangerous precedent. I am not as sure as you are that it is academic. In Ted Cruz’s case this may be so but to go that route opens America in future to very questionable circumstance. The reason we have laws is because of the problem of who gets to decide, we would like to grandfather in Cruz, the Dems Obama. Laws are an attempt to remove it from the personal where the group in power or the best player rules the day. There is still the activist judge to contend with but that can be challenged and over ruled.