Constitutional commentary from a family of legal scholars, blending historical insight with modern analysis
Over the last two months, we have laid out in detail our ideas about the key issues in the birthright citizenship case, Trump v. Barbara. Today, we compare our arguments and analysis to what the justices asked and said at oral argument on April 1.
In our last column, we imagined grilling Solicitor General D. John Sauer in a moot court on birthright citizenship. Today, we reverse angles and imagine some of the hardest questions that tough-minded justices could ask the challengers’ lawyer, our friend and ACLU counsel Cecillia Wang, at Wednesday’s Supreme Court oral argument.
The government’s top Supreme Court lawyer will likely face vigorous questioning from the justices on Wednesday in Trump v. Barbara, the birthright-citizenship case.
“Of course.” “No one wants to change that.” As mid-20th century American leaders both on and off the Supreme Court pondered America’s place in a brutish world, these are the words they used, unhesitatingly and repeatedly, to affirm their loyalty to, and indeed their love of, America’s cherished principle of equal birthright citizenship.
Attorney Pete Patterson’s latest post on birthright citizenship repeats the biggest mistakes of his original post and also makes some new mistakes, chasing irrelevances and mangling the key legal issues. Today we will briefly highlight some of the biggest flaws of Patterson’s latest essay.
“The text is the law, and it is the text that must be observed,” Justice Antonin Scalia famously insisted at page 22 of a notable book on legal interpretation. “Only the written word is the law,” Justice Neil Gorsuch has opined in a watershed opinion. “Fidelity to the law means fidelity to the
Brothers in Law is a recurring series by brothers Akhil and Vikram Amar, with special emphasis on measuring what the Supreme Court says against what the Constitution itself says.
Brothers in Law is a recurring series by brothers Akhil and Vikram Amar, with special emphasis on measuring what the Supreme Court says against what the Constitution itself says.
These days, everyone wants to be an originalist. But in Trump v. Barbara, the birthright-citizenship case at the Supreme Court, not everyone is doing originalism well.
Brothers in Law is a recurring series by brothers Akhil and Vikram Amar, with special emphasis on measuring what the Supreme Court says against what the Constitution itself says.
The battle over birthright citizenship is a battle over its exceptions. The 14th Amendment’s first sentence proudly proclaims that “[a]ll persons born . . . in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States.” No one doubts that babies born on American soil are born “in the United States.” So the key question is what “subject to the jurisdiction thereof” means.
Brothers in Law is a recurring series by brothers Akhil and Vikram Amar, with special emphasis on measuring what the Supreme Court says against what the Constitution itself says.