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Birthright Citizen: The Little Conjunction That Explains Everything
American Thinker ^ | 7 Aug, 2025 | Ted Noel

Posted on 08/08/2025 5:08:47 AM PDT by MtnClimber

I have been getting just enough email about “birthright citizenship” to suggest that there are some key misunderstandings about the concept and the implications of the Fourteenth Amendment to make one more exploration of the idea worthwhile. So as your resident “splainer,” I’ll try to ‘splain it for you.

The Fourteenth Amendment was adopted on July 9, 1868. It was the final product of a process that Illinois Senator Lyman Trumbull began in 1866. His Civil Rights Act of 1866 stated that “all persons born in the United States and not subject to any foreign power…are hereby declared citizens of the United States…”

President Andrew Johnson didn’t like the bill, so he vetoed it, but Congress overrode his veto. The Fourteenth Amendment changed the language very slightly to “born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof,” but it kept that all-important conjunction, which I’ve highlighted.

That three-letter word means that there are two (another three-letter word) conditions that have to be met. They aren’t the same thing. That three-letter conjunction is the source of all the legal arguments. So that you can clearly understand it, let’s look at a unanimous Second Amendment decision called Caetano v. Massachusetts.

The Caetano case dealt with a lady who protected herself from an abusive boyfriend by acquiring a stun gun (similar to a Taser). The Supreme Court ruled that for Massachusetts to ban her stun gun, it had to be both dangerous and unusual. There’s that little three-letter “and” word again.

The state could ban it only if both conditions were met. Matching one wasn’t enough. If it was unusual but not dangerous, sorry, Charlie. Do not pass Go, do not collect $200. Your statute goes directly to Second Amendment jail.

(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...


TOPICS: History; Society
KEYWORDS: leftism

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1 posted on 08/08/2025 5:08:47 AM PDT by MtnClimber
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To: MtnClimber

What will the Supreme Court say?


2 posted on 08/08/2025 5:09:18 AM PDT by MtnClimber (For photos of scenery, wildlife and climbing, click on my screen name for my FR home page.)
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To: MtnClimber

It’s amazing the number of times the fate of the nation depends on courts divining the meaning of one simple word.


3 posted on 08/08/2025 5:13:39 AM PDT by ProtectOurFreedom
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To: MtnClimber; P-Marlowe

As always, scotus will split the baby. They’ll deny tourism citizenship but will accept citizenship of illegals born here if parents show evidence of having worked here. I have no idea how they’ll expect such a thing to be documented since it’s illegal.


4 posted on 08/08/2025 5:17:56 AM PDT by xzins (Retired US Army chaplain. Support our troops by praying for their victory. )
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To: MtnClimber

I’m a scholar of the Constitution. “Subject to the jurisdiction” is simply meant to exclude a very narrow set of people, such as children of foreign diplomats. This argument put forth by the President is basically a non-starter.


5 posted on 08/08/2025 5:20:43 AM PDT by Kleon
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To: Kleon
Scholar?
6 posted on 08/08/2025 5:23:02 AM PDT by nesnah (Infringe - act so as to limit or undermine [something]; encroach on)
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To: MtnClimber
If you’re a Mexican citizen, you owe your allegiance to Mexico. It doesn’t matter whether you are traveling to Australia, Russia, or the US. Your allegiance is to Mexico. You are “subject to the jurisdiction of” Mexico.
And if your baby is born in any of those places, it’s still a Mexican citizen because you are a Mexican citizen.

It amazes me how people cannot seem to grasp this very simple, obvious point. Or more likely, they deliberately do so for their own ends.

7 posted on 08/08/2025 5:25:34 AM PDT by Sicon ("All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others." - G. Orwell)
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To: ProtectOurFreedom
It’s amazing the number of times the fate of the nation depends on courts divining the meaning of one simple word is entirely highjacked by liberal trash and scum and conservatives sit idly by while it happens.

(Not saying that to anybody in particular, but we all know what I mean.)

8 posted on 08/08/2025 5:31:07 AM PDT by LouAvul (1 John 2:22: Who is a liar but he that denieth that Jesus is the Christ? He is antichrist.)
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To: Kleon

Maybe that was the predicate in the 1700’s, but they probably weren’t thinking of millions of people just walking in to set up shop and apply for free stuff. That would have been inconceivable.


9 posted on 08/08/2025 5:32:23 AM PDT by FoxInSocks ("Hope is not a course of action." — M. O'Neal, USMC)
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To: MtnClimber
Folks may laugh, but this little ditty and it's companions got me through many an English grammer test:

Conjunction Junction

10 posted on 08/08/2025 5:42:02 AM PDT by Semper Vigilantis (Step 1 to save The Republic: Repeal The Seventeenth Amendment)
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To: Kleon

It means what it plainly says and says what it simply means

Not YOUR idea of “ simply means”

You do violence to the text and pulled your opinion from the penumbra of your “ scholarly” rectal emanation I suspect

I could be wrong
But I doubt it


11 posted on 08/08/2025 5:42:40 AM PDT by cuz1961
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To: MtnClimber
Subject to the Jurisdiction Thereof: Birthright Citizenship and the Fourteenth Amendment House Committee on the Judiciary
(starts at 32:54 so skip to there for actual start)(2:34:08 total time)
12 posted on 08/08/2025 5:44:17 AM PDT by philman_36 (Pride breakfasted with plenty, dined with poverty and supped with infamy. Benjamin Franklin)
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To: xzins

if parents show evidence of having worked here. I have no idea how they’ll expect such a thing to be documented since it’s illegal.>>>They would probably say that working here is setting up a domicile.


13 posted on 08/08/2025 5:44:35 AM PDT by kvanbrunt2
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To: LouAvul
Isn't it amazing that a document created for people that were mostly uneducated at the time was understandable at the time and for the next 150 or so years suddenly needs suddenly to be 'interpreted'?

(I have the same complaint about The Bible. One of my biggest turnoffs is when the preacher says "What did God / Jesus mean by that...?".)

14 posted on 08/08/2025 5:46:37 AM PDT by Semper Vigilantis (Step 1 to save The Republic: Repeal The Seventeenth Amendment)
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To: Kleon

Haha, FR is full of “scholars”. Just ask them. Experts one and all.


15 posted on 08/08/2025 5:49:53 AM PDT by Hatteras
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To: MtnClimber

The offspring born here of parents who are not U.S. citizens are not natural-born U.S. citizens.


16 posted on 08/08/2025 5:50:21 AM PDT by batazoid (Natural born citizen)
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To: Kleon

Wrong


17 posted on 08/08/2025 5:53:27 AM PDT by nikos1121
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To: Kleon
I’m a scholar of the Constitution.

No, you're not. No scholar would begin that way.

“Subject to the jurisdiction” is simply meant to exclude a very narrow set of people, such as children of foreign diplomats. This argument put forth by the President is basically a non-starter.

That list was offered by Senator Howard for example purposes. It was not definitive. One is best served by the definition of "subject" in the Bouvier Law Dictionary of 1856.

SUBJECT, persons, government. An individual member of a nation, who is subject to the laws; this term is used in contradistiction to citizen, which is applied to the same individual when considering his political rights. Then we have Chief Justice Miller's opinion in the Slaughterhouse Cases: The first observation we have to make on this clause is that it puts at rest both the questions which we stated to have been the subject of differences of opinion. It declares that persons may be citizens of the United States without regard to their citizenship of a particular State, and it overturns the Dred Scott decision by making all persons born within the United States and subject to its jurisdiction citizens of the United States. That its main purpose was to establish the citizenship of the negro can admit of no doubt. The phrase, "subject to its jurisdiction" was intended to exclude from its operation children of ministers, consuls, and citizens or subjects of foreign States born within the United States. Then we have Chief Justice Fuller's dissenting opinion in US v. Wong Kim Ark. If the conclusion of the majority opinion is correct, then the children of citizens of the United States, who have been born abroad since July 28, 1868, when the amendment was declared ratified, were and are aliens, unless they have or shall, on attaining majority, become citizens by naturalization in the United States; and no statutory provision to the contrary is of any force or effect. And children who are aliens by descent, but born on our soil, are exempted from the exercise of the power to exclude or to expel aliens, or any class of aliens, so often maintained by this court,- an exemption apparently disregarded by the acts in respect of the exclusion of persons of Chinese descent. That is what a "scholar of the Constitution" would do.
18 posted on 08/08/2025 5:57:47 AM PDT by Carry_Okie (The tree of liberty needs a rope.)
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To: Hatteras

Some of us are Miscellaneous Experts who have developed expertise in numerous fields merely by being.

Some time after say 70 or 71, the pent up expertise and wisdom just begins to bubble up and out.


19 posted on 08/08/2025 6:04:04 AM PDT by bert ( (KE. NP. +12) Where is ZORRO when California so desperately needs him?)
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To: xzins

“...They’ll deny tourism citizenship but will accept citizenship of illegals born here...”

Ironic, if correct; the tourist has permission be in the country while the invader does not.


20 posted on 08/08/2025 6:16:57 AM PDT by PTBAA
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