Charter Member Keith Whittington Publishes Research Paper on Birthright Citizenship

Keith Whittington, a charter member of the Society for the Rule of Law, released a new paper titled By Birth Alone: The Original Meaning of Birthright Citizenship and “Subject to the Jurisdiction” of the United States.

Whittington argues that President Trump’s executive order denying citizenship to children born in the U.S. to unauthorized immigrants is unconstitutional. He writes:

“The conventional wisdom is right, and the executive order is wrong. Children born within the territory of the United States are natural-born citizens except under very narrow exceptions. Those historically recognized exceptions do not include the case of unauthorized aliens.”

He stresses that the Fourteenth Amendment “sought to lock-in the liberty-enhancing rule that current political majorities cannot exclude undesirable populations from their birthright as citizens.” He warns that redefining the clause to exclude children of unauthorized immigrants “would undo that achievement and reopen the door of the political manipulation of the qualifications of birthright citizenship that the Reconstruction Congress sought to close.”

Read the full paper here.

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Keith Whittington is a charter member of the Society for the Rule of Law.