I read much of The Volokh Conspiracy because I find their posts mostly interesting, even to a layman. There are times when their discussions of the law and courts and appeals and dicta and so on and so forth gets a bit tedious to me, but I understand that the law can be complicated (mostly because the legislators who draft laws unnecessarily make them complicated, IMHO) and so when that happens, I acknowledge it and move on.
There are times, though, when it seems to me that lawyers take the simple and make it complicated. I'm of the opinion, for example, that if there's a simple interpretation of a phrase or article in the US Constitution, that it should be favored over a more complicated, "legalistic" interpretation. So when The Head Conspirator links to a lengthy Note from The Yale Law Journal (PDF document), I just had to shake my head in despair. I really wish you guys would not try to over-complicate things.
There's a lot of hand-wringing, "it's never been defined," "this hasn't been tested in court" lawyerese in that Yale Note which makes me just shake my head. Why does our Constitution have to be complicated? Sure, I'm undoubtedly naïve on this, but this whole thing seems to me to be pretty simple:
The Constitution says only "natural born Citizen" may be elected President
The plainest interpretation of "natural born Citizen," it seems to me, is someone who was a Citizen at the instant of their birth
Since no further definition is provided in the Constitution, it then falls to Congress to say what defines a "Citizen." If that's what someone is when they're born, then they're a "natural born Citizen."
