Pete Patterson is a partner at Cooper & Kirk, PLLC. His practice includes appellate litigation, constitutional litigation, commercial litigation, and administrative law. Prior to arriving at Cooper & Kirk, he served as Associate Counsel to the President in the White House Counsel’s Office. Before that, he served as a law clerk to Judge Jeffrey S. Sutton of the United States Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit.
While I have written multiple posts for SCOTUSblog on birthright citizenship, a substantial part of my practice is litigating Second Amendment claims.
Professors Akhil and Vikram Amar have responded to my recent post arguing that the 14th Amendment does not grant automatic citizenship to the children of temporary visitors to the United States.
Critics and supporters of President Donald Trump’s executive order on birthright citizenship often focus on the order’s barring of automatic citizenship to children born to individuals unlawfully present in the United States.
The Black Codes should be used neither to restrict the scope of Second Amendment rights nor to undermine Bruen’s historical method (or that of originalism in general). Indeed, rejecting reliance on the Black Codes is not only consistent with analyzing the history behind a law – it is demanded by it.
Pete Patterson and John Ohlendorf are attorneys at the Washington, D.C. law firm Cooper & Kirk, PLLC, which filed an amicus brief on behalf of the Republican Governors Public Policy Committee supporting Governor McDonnell. The views expressed here are their own.