Tea at Trianon: Birthright Citizenship at SCOTUS, Returning to Text, History, and Allegiance

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Tuesday, December 9, 2025

Birthright Citizenship at SCOTUS, Returning to Text, History, and Allegiance

From Amuse on X:

The Citizenship Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment contains fourteen words before the comma, and three of them still do most of the work. All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States. Those words are spare, yet they direct the reader toward a demanding idea, citizenship follows allegiance. President Trump’s Executive Order 14160 asks whether a birth that occurs while both parents lack any lawful and durable tie to the US satisfies that condition. The answer, rooted in text, history, structure, and the very logic of membership, is no. The Supreme Court has now agreed to decide this question. Oral argument is expected in spring 2026, and a final ruling will likely arrive by early summer. This is the first time since 1898 that the Court will squarely face the constitutional meaning of birthright citizenship. The moment is overdue.
Begin with the text itself. If the framers meant that every birth on US soil confers citizenship, the qualifying phrase would serve no function. They did not say, all persons born in the United States are citizens. They wrote, born here and subject to the jurisdiction. Senator Lyman Trumbull explained the point with clarity, being subject to the jurisdiction required owing no allegiance to any other sovereign and being under the complete jurisdiction of the United States. The 1866 Civil Rights Act used an almost identical formula, all persons born in the United States and not subject to any foreign power, excluding Indians not taxed, are citizens. The drafters understood the phrases as equivalent. Senator Jacob Howard, who introduced the Clause, described its scope as excluding the children of foreigners, aliens, and families of ambassadors or ministers. Senator Reverdy Johnson agreed and tied jurisdiction to allegiance to the United States at birth. Representative John Bingham had earlier distilled the same idea, citizenship attaches to those born here of parents not owing allegiance to a foreign sovereignty. The shared theme, expressed again and again, is allegiance rather than geography. (Read more.)