Trump v. Barbara · ¶32

A year after General Lee’s surrender at Appomattox, Congress sought to turn Bates’s opinion into law. The result was the Civil Rights Act of 1866. The Act declared that “all persons born in the United States and not subject to any foreign power, excluding Indians not taxed, are hereby . . . citizens of the United States.” §1, 14 Stat. 27. To the Reconstruction Congress, the Act was simply assumed to invoke the common law rule—as Bates had in his “ablest and most exhaustive opinion,” Cong. Globe, 39th Cong., 1st Sess., 1116 (1866) (Rep. Wilson), and as the New York Court of Chancery had “[i]n the great case of Lynch vs. Clarke,” id., at 1832 (Rep. Lawrence). Indeed, the bill’s sponsor, Senator Lyman Trumbull, enthusiastically agreed with the bill’s critics that it would make citizens of “the children of Chinese and Gypsies born in this country.” Id., at 498. “[E]ven the infant child of a…

slip opinion, revised 7/01/26
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