Friday, August 22, 2025

Whittington on Birthright Citizenship

Keith E. Whittington, Yale Law School, has posted By Birth Alone: The Original Meaning of Birthright Citizenship and Subject to the Jurisdiction of the United States:

The citizenship clause of the Fourteenth Amendment entrenched birthright citizenship into the Constitution. Building on a recent revisionist scholarly literature, President Trump's executive orders have asserted that the scope of birthright citizenship should be understood to exclude children born on American soil to parents who are unauthorized to be in the country or authorized to be in the country for only a limited purpose and period. This asserted limitation of birthright citizenship is at odds with the original meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment and the antecedent common-law rule of nativity that the language of the Fourteenth Amendment embodied and declared.

--Dan Ernst