The judge is wrong.
L
Some agree. some don't. He's a die hard Libertarian and unfortunately allows that to cloud his 'rulings' on occasion.
I think he is too.
Yup, I think we're about to see another blowhard become a casualty as Trump marches right over his political corpse.
"Judge" my ass, just another illegal supporting suck up. F'em.
I think you might be right about that, Lurker. But that would depend on whether one construes citizenship according to the doctrine of jus soli or of jus sanquinis. Evidently, Judge Napolitano is squarely in the first camp.
Some definitions:
(1) Jus soli (from the Latin, meaning "right of the soil"), a/k/a "birthright citizenship," holds that citizenship of a person is determined by the place where a person was born. Thus, whoever is born in the U.S. and is subject to its jurisdiction is automatically granted U.S. citizenship. That's what the Fourteenth Amendment appears to hold.Regarding (1), and the language of the Fourteenth Amendment, I do not see any direct guidance as to how to construe the "subject to the jurisdiction thereof" language. To me it seems the question, "who is subject to the jurisdiction...." is not answered at all. And maybe that's the problem. Or opportunity, depending on how one looks at it.
(2) Jus sanguinis holds that citizenship is not determined by place of birth but by having one (or both) parents who are themselves citizens of the state. This undoubtedly is the rationale behind the Article II constitutional requirement that the POTUS must be a "natural born" Citizen (or a naturalized Citizen — i.e., one who obtained citizenship through the legal immigration process), of the United States. So, a person who was born out-of-country to one (or two) Citizens of the United States is a "natural-born" citizen. Jus Soli clearly cannot be the determinative principle of presidential eligibility.
And I wonder, what is the sense of believing that an infant born to a citizen of another country is immediately under the jurisdiction of the U.S. government, just because the child was born on U.S. soil? I had always thought that minor children are under the jurisdiction of their parents. Under jus sanguinis, if the parent(s) is from, say, Colombia, then the kid is a Colombian citizen. Plus it goes without saying that minors cannot give affirmative consent to the Oath of Citizenship before age 18.
Are there other countries in the world who consider, say, a child born to American tourists on their soil are under their "jurisdiction," and thus automatically citizens of their country?
Plus we have to look at the historical setting of the Fourteenth Amendment. Clearly, it had an end in view: To ensure the civil liberties of former slaves. Entirely commendable in my view. (But they had to nationalize citizenship to do it, a severe encroachment on the sovereignty of the several States; but that's an issue for another time.)
The irony here is all former slaves then living were already natural-born citizens of the United States from the date of their birth. (One can say with confidence that voluntary immigration from Africa to the United States prior to the ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment was exactly zero. Africans weren't rushing in, in droves, to deposit "anchor babies" on our shores. The emancipated slaves (Praise the Lord!) were folks whose families had already been here for a very long time.)
In conclusion, the Fourteenth Amendment appears to be poorly drafted. It's a reminder that "no good deed goes unpunished": In order to promote a virtuous, just goal, the drafters of the Fourteenth seem not to have recognized that they were opening a can of worms that we wouldn't even notice, until roughly 150 years later.
Just some thoughts.... Thank you ever so much for writing, Lurker!