Anthony Michael Kreis, Georgia State University College of Law, has posted Discovering the Historical Anglo-American Constitution:
The controversy over birthright citizenship in the United States and the meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment has exposed two urgent needs in American constitutional scholarship: a meticulous account of the history of the law of natural-born subjects and citizens, and a rigorous methodology for responsibly engaging with constitutional developments over long periods. This article answers both. It advances the "historical constitution" as a framework for assessing longarc legal developments, attending at once to continuity and change, to the form and formation of law, and to legal and socio-political authority-the high law and the low law. The framework gives American constitutional scholars a disciplined approach to Anglo-American inquiry, one that asks how law operated across time rather than at isolated moments. Drawing on rich archival sources, Year Book entries, and Privy Council records-including the original manuscript record of Calvin's Case-it demonstrates that the territorial rule of birthright citizenship held with remarkable consistency across five English legal systems, surviving political, social, and economic pressures alike. The article traces that principle's transatlantic journey to the Americas, illuminating what the historical constitution reveals about national identity and citizenship at the origins of constitutionalism in the United States. The method's promise extends well beyond this Article; its utility is not exhausted by the question that occasions it.
--Dan Ernst
