Trump v. Barbara · ¶72

Perhaps recognizing the absence of ratification-era support for a domicile-based rule of national citizenship, the Government and principal dissent both emphasize sources from after the ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment. They turn to the same international law treatises that underpinned the Government’s attempts to limit birthright citizenship in the 1880s. This fundamentally revisionist scholarship—and the post-1884 Executive Branch actions that relied upon it—do not put in doubt the understanding of the Citizenship Clause at the time of (and after) its ratification. As Senator Trumbull explained in 1871, the Citizenship Clause recognized that “[e]very person born within the jurisdiction” of the Nation was “a citizen of the United States,” as had been true under “the common law of this country as well as of England.” Cong. Globe, 1st Sess., 42d Cong., at 575; see also, e.g.,…

slip opinion, revised 7/01/26
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