Chief Justice John Roberts begins the Supreme Court’s birthright citizenship opinion in Westminster in 1608 with Calvin’s Case and the English law of royal subjectship.
I would begin in Philadelphia in 1776.
Between those two places—and those two moments—lies the American Revolution. And the Revolution changed more than who governed America. It changed the very foundation of political membership.
That is the central problem with the Supreme Court’s decision in Trump v. Barbara. The Court’s opinion is learned, careful, and historically rich. Chief Justice Roberts traces the English doctrine of jus soli through Calvin’s Case, Blackstone, a substantial body of antebellum American authorities, and finally United States v. Wong Kim Ark. It may well become the definitive defense of the conventional understanding of the 14th Amendment’s Citizenship Clause.
But it answers the wrong question.
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