“What the term means to the last Supreme Court justices that bothered to rule on it is what actually carries weight.”
They already have. My history is hazy, been a long time since I read it, but there was a ruling about citizenship in the 60s. The Supreme Court ruled on a citizenship case, and mentioned natural born citizenship as in the context of having citizen parents.
The Naturalization Act of 1790 defined it as having citizen parents.
If that’s true, then the author should just appeal to the existing precedent instead of appealing to some interpretation of what the founders may have thought.
Are you thinking of Rogers vs Bellei?
In that case they decided that someone who was born a citizen through a naturalization statute could lose his citizenship for failing to comply with the requirements congress put into the law granting citizenship at birth.
The Naturalization Act of 1790 defined it as having citizen parents.
It did not "define" it, it alluded to it, but that language was stripped out in the next version which they created in 1794, if I recall correctly.
You cannot define natural citizenship by law. It is like trying to claim an adopted child is an actual child of your blood. It is not, and it cannot be. It can only be an adopted child.