Trump v. Barbara · ¶508

It is telling that Justice Gray’s statement of the holding also mentioned that Wong Kim Ark and his parents were Chinese. The British birthright-subjecthood rule did not take account of the race or nationality of the alien to whom a child was born within the King’s domain. See Calvin’s Case, 7 Co. Rep., at 5b–6a, 77 Eng. Rep., at 383–384. So if the opinion aimed to adopt the British rule (with the one new exception for tribal Indians), there was no need whatsoever for the holding to say anything about the race of Wong Kim Ark or his parents. Yet it did so. And not only that, the opinion spent many paragraphs describing statutes, court decisions, and debates in Congress about the plight of Chinese immigrants. Wong Kim Ark, 169 U. S., at 694–704. The opinion also properly stressed that the fundamental objective of the Fourteenth Amendment was to protect the rights of people of all races.…

slip opinion, revised 7/01/26
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