Publications
Constitutional Citizenship: A Legislative History
- March 28, 2011
Attacks against the Citizenship Clause of the 14th Amendment have picked up in recent months, with legislators at both the national and state levels introducing bills that would deny U.S. citizenship or “state citizenship” to the children born to unauthorized immigrants in the U.S. There are two strands of attacks on birthright citizenship. One strand arises out of simple nativist anger at the impact of immigrants, legal or otherwise, on society. The other argues that the current interpretation of the Citizenship Clause as covering the children of “illegal” immigrants is inconsistent with the “original intent” of the Framers of the 14th Amendment. Originalism is often used as a method to clarify unclear portions of constitutional text or to fill contextual gaps in the document. This is not, however, how originalism is being used in the context to the Citizenship Clause. Here, originalists use clever arguments and partial quotations to eradicate the actual text of the Amendment. In essence, they claim the Framers did not really mean what they said.
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