Well, this could be the root of our disagreement. I don't believe that there can be devised a system that will make it impossible for an ineligible candidate to occasionally get elected. Voters, electors and judges are all human beings with human limitations.
It is never possible to prove with certainty the qualifications of any candidate. Mistakes will always be possible. No judge or group of judges can protect you from uncertainty. In fact, one of the things of which you can be certain is that, no matter how we design our system, we are all destined to die without being certain of the qualifications of any of our presidents.
When it comes to a candidate's qualifications, some person or group of persons has to be empowered to decide. In the last 57 presidential elections, the voters and their electors have selected our president and implicitly approved their qualifications. I believe that our procedures conform with the terms of the Constitution.
I don't agree with your suggestion that we can avoid all possible mistakes by entrusting the Supreme Court to measure the qualifications of our presidential candidates. I don't think that the Constitution grants them that power and I don't think that the Supreme Court even wants that kind of power. I don't think any of our justices want to spend their time questioning whether a state's public records are false or fraudulent. I don't think that they want to spend their time trying to determine the real paternity of candidates. I don't think that any of them want to spend their time rummaging through utility bills and such in order to make sure that the residency requirement has been met. And, on and on and on and no one will be any more certain than before. And, no matter how they decide, particularly if they cannot unanimously decide, many will disagree.
After four years of very public "birther" investigations and legal research, Chief Justice Roberts accepted an invitation to administer the oath of office to Obama less than two months ago. As I previously indicated, the Chief Justice is not required to ever administer oaths to presidents. Neither he nor any of the justices are required to even attend a presidential inauguration.
I resist your suggestion that Chief Justice Robert's active participation in Obama's recent inauguration might be due to his being "blissfully ignorant" of your legal research and of your conviction that you have discovered the one and only true meaning of the term "natural born citizen" as used in our Constitution. (I won't ask you to tell me if you have ever met anyone who has actually read Vattel's eighteenth century historical theories in the language in which he wrote it.)
Like everyone else, I cannot offer you any certainty. However, I firmly believe that if Chief Justice Roberts agreed with your two premises ((1) that Obama is "clearly ineligible" and (2) that the Supreme Court has the power to reverse the decision of the voters and their electors), he would not have ratified the legitimacy of Obama's presidency by administering the oath of office. I also believe that if the other justices had agreed with your two premises, they would not have showed up at all. I think you ought to consider the implications of their conduct.
Yet, you pretty sure of saying the system worked, yet here you admit there are obvious flaws. So how can you have certainty about the system??
I don't agree with your suggestion that we can avoid all possible mistakes by entrusting the Supreme Court to measure the qualifications of our presidential candidates.
I never said we could avoid "all possible mistakes" nor did I say anything about "entrusting" the Supreme Court. I gave what the Constitution says about the powers of the judicial branch, and I followed with citations on state laws that allow eligibility to be reviewed by someone other than the electors or by the voters through by way of a process other than casting a vote.
After four years of very public "birther" investigations and legal research, Chief Justice Roberts accepted an invitation to administer the oath of office to Obama less than two months ago.
This doesn't mean anything other than what I said: a protocol exists, and Roberts understood he cannot unilaterally do anything to interfere with or go ouside the legal process.
I also believe that if the other justices had agreed with your two premises, they would not have showed up at all. I think you ought to consider the implications of their conduct.
This is a ciruclar premise. That conduct doesn't make Obama eligible for office. It shows that these people have respect for protocol and the presumed responsibilities of their public offices.