That is the phrase, stuck in the middle of the first sentence of the first section of the 14th Amendment, that President Donald Trump is seeking to redefine as part of his campaign to overturn the more than century-old policy of birthright citizenship in the United States. “All persons born or naturalized in the United States,” the 14th Amendment begins, “and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.”
The Myth of Birthright Citizenship: What the Fourteenth Amendment Really Says; By Richard A. Epstein; Encounter Books; 232 pp.; $19.99
The Trump administration argued before the Supreme Court that the phrase, “subject to the jurisdiction thereof,” limits the grant of citizenship at birth to the children of parents who owe allegiance to the U.S. government and are therefore not subject to a foreign sovereign. For the administration, this means legal immigrants owe allegiance to the U.S., and their children are due citizenship at birth, while illegal immigrants do not, and should therefore be denied birthright citizenship.
In his new book, The Myth of Birthright Citizenship, legal scholar Richard A. Epstein takes that argument a step further, making the case that granting citizenship at birth to any alien, legal or otherwise, “undoes everything about how naturalization had worked from the outset of the Republic.”
