There's nothing confusing about the terminology, other than your refusal to admit what the words actually say. All children, born in the country of parents who are citizens = the nomenclature familiar to the founders. These are the natives or natural born citizens. So simple, even an obot should an understand.
But they didn't, and the phrase they used makes sense as the American version of Natural Born Subject.
Except that nothing in the decision ever says that natural born citizen is the American version of natural born subject. They were specific in the words they did use. Plus, we know U.S. law rejected at least one or more of the unnatural constructs of natural born subjectship. Children born overseas weren't inherently considered to be natural born citizens. It took a naturalization act to express this principle, although it was short-lived. So much for that faither theory.
They also cite Dicey:
It's funny how you faithers go on and on that Vattel isn't U.S. law, but you have no problems citing other names and acting as if those are, despite the fact that, for example, Dicey's definition was not cited as THE definition of natural born citizen, while Vattel's was. Ouch, faithers, ouch! Further, this 'leading principle' of English law was enacted through a naturalization declaration by a king who was unilaterally claiming the subjects of Scotland as his own. The act didn't pertain to foreigners, per se, but to Scots whose children were born in England.
“Except that nothing in the decision ever says that natural born citizen is the American version of natural born subject. “
What they wrote:
In United States v. Rhodes (1866), Mr. Justice Swayne, sitting in the Circuit Court, said:
All persons born in the allegiance of the King are natural-born subjects, and all persons born in the allegiance of the United States are natural-born citizens. Birth and allegiance go together. Such is the rule of the common law, and it is the common law of this country, as well as of England. . . . We find no warrant for the opinion [p663] that this great principle of the common law has ever been changed in the United States. It has always obtained here with the same vigor, and subject only to the same exceptions, since as before the Revolution...
...The Supreme Court of North Carolina, speaking by Mr; Justice Gaston, said:
Before our Revolution, all free persons born within the dominions of the King of Great Britain, whatever their color or complexion, were native-born British subjects; those born out of his allegiance were aliens. . . . Upon the Revolution, no other change took place in the law of North Carolina than was consequent upon the transition from a colony dependent on an European King to a free and sovereign [p664] State; . . . British subjects in North Carolina became North Carolina freemen; . . . and all free persons born within the State are born citizens of the State. . . . The term “citizen,” as understood in our law, is precisely analogous to the term “subject” in the common law, and the change of phrase has entirely resulted from the change of government. The sovereignty has been transferred from one man to the collective body of the people, and he who before as a “subject of the king” is now “a citizen of the State.”
State v. Manuel (1838), 4 Dev. & Bat. 20, 24-26.
That all children born within the dominion of the United States of foreign parents holding no diplomatic office became citizens at the time of their birth does not appear to have been contested or doubted until more than fifty years after the adoption of the Constitution, when the matter was elaborately argued in the Court of Chancery of New York and decided upon full consideration by Vice Chancellor Sandford in favor of their citizenship. Lynch v. Clark, (1844) 1 Sandf.Ch. 583.
The same doctrine was repeatedly affirmed in the executive departments, as, for instance, by Mr. Marcy, Secretary of State, in 1854, 2 Whart.Int.Dig. (2d ed.) p. 394; by Attorney General Black in 1859, 9 Opinions, 373, and by Attorney General Bates in 1862, 10 Opinions, 328, 382, 394, 396.
Chancellor Kent, in his Commentaries, speaking of the “general division of the inhabitants of every country under the comprehensive title of aliens and natives,” says:
Natives are all persons born within the jurisdiction and allegiance of the United States. This is the rule of the common law, without any regard or reference to the political condition or allegiance of their parents, with the exception of the children of ambassadors, who are in theory born within the allegiance of the foreign power they represent. . . .
The full opinion goes in to much more detail, but no one reading it can doubt but that the Supreme Court has already decided that NBC = NBS, and the citizenship of the parents irrelevant to NBC as it is to NBS.