Lately, I've been
asked about the meaning of Section 1 of the Fourteenth Amendment.
In the final analysis there are fundamentally two very different aspects to the so-called anchor-baby issue. One is the political, which is a waste of time to discuss because it is driven by stupid voters, avaricious businesses, bleeding hearts, powerful lobbies, corrupt politicians, activist minorities, patrician elites.
Legally, however, there’s a long, scholarly constitutional answer. It relies on what Section 1 of the 14th Amendment meant to those who drafted, supported, and enacted it. The short answer is no instant citizenship for anchor babies.
Moreover, because all issues arising in constitutional decision-making arise only in one way -- from the facts of each case -- it is crucial to understand that no case has ever been brought to, let alone decided by, the Supreme Court of the United States raising the citizen status of a child of illegal aliens. The question is wide open, and if it ever reaches the Court that body will be writing on a clean slate. (So much for the Constitutional-deprived media blowhards who insist, with their ignorance on display, that everyone born in the United States is a citizen no matter the legal status of their parents.)
In the final analysis there are fundamentally two very different aspects to the so-called anchor-baby issue. One is the political, which is a waste of time to discuss because it is driven by stupid voters, avaricious businesses, bleeding hearts, powerful lobbies, corrupt politicians, activist minorities, patrician elites.
Legally, however, there’s a long, scholarly constitutional answer. It relies on what Section 1 of the 14th Amendment meant to those who drafted, supported, and enacted it. The short answer is no instant citizenship for anchor babies.
Moreover, because all issues arising in constitutional decision-making arise only in one way -- from the facts of each case -- it is crucial to understand that no case has ever been brought to, let alone decided by, the Supreme Court of the United States raising the citizen status of a child of illegal aliens. The question is wide open, and if it ever reaches the Court that body will be writing on a clean slate. (So much for the Constitutional-deprived media blowhards who insist, with their ignorance on display, that everyone born in the United States is a citizen no matter the legal status of their parents.)
This lack of
constitutional precedent is ground for great fear
because
to today’s “living constitutionalists,” both on and off the bench, Section
1 means whatever at least five justices say it means.
Yet no Republican presidential candidate has spent time addressing the prospect that the next Chief Executive will probably have the power to reshape the Supreme Court of the United States for decades to come.
What's new?
Yet no Republican presidential candidate has spent time addressing the prospect that the next Chief Executive will probably have the power to reshape the Supreme Court of the United States for decades to come.
What's new?
