Arguments made before the Supreme Court for birthright citizenship have been much like modern philosophy: a self-conscious intellectual exercise, bereft of clear thinking or common sense.
Section one of the 14th Amendment was written for one reason only—to ensure that individual states could not deny to freed slaves the rights that came with American citizenship:
All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.
The Court’s Slaughter-House cases of 1873, although not primarily focused on citizenship, made it clear that the 14th Amendment specifically concerned recently freed blacks, not anyone else. Writing for the majority, Justice Samuel F. Miller said,
It is so clearly a provision for that race and that emergency, that a strong case would be necessary for its application to any other.
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