Trump's Birthright Citizenship Move Draws on Unlikely Source: Liberal Legal Theory

2 hours ago7 min read1 comments

A controversial executive order targeting birthright citizenship, a key element of the administration's immigration agenda, finds its intellectual origins in an unlikely place: a 1985 thesis from two liberal Yale law professors. The work by Peter H.Schuck and Rogers M. Smith, 'Citizenship Without Consent,' argued that granting automatic citizenship to children of undocumented immigrants was a legislative policy, not an unchangeable constitutional right.This academic theory, once a niche legal argument, has now been deployed to justify a sweeping presidential directive, creating a stark irony as the original authors have since voiced concerns over the real-world implications of their scholarly idea. The legal foundation for birthright citizenship is the Fourteenth Amendment's Citizenship Clause, established after the Civil War to secure the status of formerly enslaved people.Its language—'all persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof'—has been broadly interpreted for over a century, a precedent solidified by the Supreme Court's 1898 ruling in United States v. Wong Kim Ark.The current executive action directly challenges this long-standing interpretation, using a decades-old counter-argument to upend what has been considered settled law. The professors' reported regret highlights the divide between theoretical legal discourse and the tangible consequences of policy.The move has triggered immediate legal challenges, with experts predicting a swift judicial review that may ultimately be decided by the Supreme Court. This confrontation tests the boundaries of executive authority and the stability of constitutional understanding, with potential to influence global immigration debates and redefine core questions of national identity and belonging within the United States.

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