Trump v. Barbara · ¶256

A long list of eminent 19th-century legal scholars—including Thomas Cooley, Francis Wharton, Henry Campbell Black, and Justice Samuel Miller—agreed. Cooley wrote that “a citizen by birth must not only be born within the United States, but he must also be subject to the jurisdiction thereof; and by this is meant that full and complete jurisdiction to which citizens generally are subject, and not any qualified and partial jurisdiction, such as may consist with allegiance to some other government.” General Principles of Constitutional Law 243. Francis Wharton explained that children “born in the United States” of “parents not being here domiciled, are not citizens.” Wharton Treatise 1880, at 41; see also 2 Wharton Digest 393–394 (Citizenship Clause “exclude[d] children born in the United States to foreigners here on transient residence, such children not being by the law of nations…

slip opinion, revised 7/01/26
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