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Posted on 05/05/2025 2:59:50 PM PDT by absalom01
Washington, D.C.—The Claremont Institute’s Center for Constitutional Jurisprudence, led by Dr. John Eastman, submitted an amicus curiae brief to the Supreme Court in support of President Trump’s executive order, Protecting the Meaning and Value of American Citizenship, and related legal challenges disputing an expansive interpretation of the Fourteenth Amendment’s Birthright Citizenship Clause.
Three separate activist judges have blocked this lawful executive order, their rulings resting on the premise that children born in the United States to parents here only temporarily or unlawfully are automatic citizens.
Our brief demonstrates that the Fourteenth Amendment was understood to grant citizenship only to those born in America that are “subject to the jurisdiction thereof,” requiring “complete” allegiance to this country, not to the children of foreign nationals passing through or living here without proper authorization.
The amicus brief traces the historical and constitutional record, showing that:
Discussing the brief, Ryan P. Williams, President, The Claremont Institute said “The notion that foreign nationals can secure American citizenship for their children merely by being present on U.S. soil—lawfully or unlawfully—has no basis in the text, history, or original understanding of the Fourteenth Amendment. The Claremont Institute is proud to advance a constitutional understanding of citizenship—one based on consent, allegiance, and a nation’s sovereign right to define its own political community.”
Click here to read the amicus brief.
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He's been the most cogent commenter on the issue for a long time, and he may well have made the following point before, but it's new to me, and adds some critical historical context.
III. The Contrary Evidence is Compelling.
A. The American Revolution Rejected the Feudal Doctrine of Birthright Subjectship in Favor of Citizenship Based on Consent and Allegiance Understanding the Citizenship Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment requires appreciating the revolutionary break from English feudal concepts of subjectship. The modern notion of automatic birthright citizenship based solely on the accident of location at birth is an inheritance from the English common law doctrine of naturalborn subjectship—a doctrine fundamentally at odds with American constitutional principles. See Erler, supra, at 170–72. i. English Common Law and Perpetual Allegiance Under English common law, as articulated in Calvin’s Case, 7 Co. Rep. 1a, 77 Eng. Rep. 377 (K.B. 1608), and William Blackstone’s Commentaries, birth within the King’s dominions automatically rendered one a “natural-born subject.” See Blackstone, Commentaries 1:366–70 (1765).
Blackstone described this natural allegiance as a “debt of gratitude” that could not be “forfeited, cancelled, or altered, by any change of time, place, or circumstance.” Id. at 357-58. This bond of allegiance was perpetual and indissoluble—a feudal tie grounded in the hierarchical relationship between subject and sovereign, rather than in any voluntary act of consent. 19
This conception explicitly denied the right of expatriation. Once born a subject, a person remained a subject for life, regardless of any later wishes or actions. See id.; see also, Erler, supra, at 179. ii. The American Revolution and the Shift to Citizenship by Consent The American Revolution constituted a fundamental repudiation of this feudal model. The Declaration of Independence proclaimed that governments derive “their just powers from the consent of the governed,” and that the people possess an inherent right to “alter or abolish” any government destructive of their rights. The Declaration of Independence ¶ 2, 1 Stat. 1 (1776).
And if that were not a clear enough repudiation of the English rule of perpetual allegiance, the Declaration’s closing paragraph is unmistakable. It declared “That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; [and] that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown ….” Id. ¶ 32 (emphasis added). As Jefferson wrote even prior to 1776, the right of expatriation—the right “of departing from the country in which chance, not choice, has placed them”—is a natural right inherent in all men.
See Thomas Jefferson, A Summary View of the Rights of British America (1774), quoted in Erler, supra, at 169. The very act of declaring independence, absolving the colonies from all allegiance to the British Crown, was an exercise of this natural right, and a rejection of perpetual allegiance imposed by mere accident of birth and the English doctrine of jus soli. Thus, the Revolution transformed the legal conception of political membership from one based on birthright subjectship to one based on mutual consent. Citizenship 20 in the American republic became predicated not on geographical happenstance, but on voluntary allegiance to a political community that itself consents to the individual's membership.
It’s the central issue of our time.
And the reason why the disgusting lawfare gangsters went after Eastman.
And why Trump should return the favor on them...and apparently is.
Jefferson literally physically scratched out the word “subject” from an early draft of the Declaration of Independence and write over it: “citizen”.
Never looked back.
This seems to be the fastest way to get the question before SCOTUS.
Eastman makes the best case, but it’s going to be a big lift to get SCOTUS to tip over what has come to be the “common knowledge” that the 14th confers birthright citizenship.
This brief will make it a lot harder for them to dodge the issue, but with Roberts, well, let’s not get our hopes up.
All the idiot liberals will vote against the correct meaning and against the interests of the nation. I think at least two of the Moderates, Roberts and Barret will vote wrong, and given how much the lawyer schools have been polluted with an idiotic understanding of the 14th amendment, I wouldn't even be surprised if it was unanimous against the nation.
Chief Justice John Roberts is compromised by working with Rod Rosenstein to take out Justice Antonin Scalia so he could have a say in Scalia’s replacement.
Bravo for Claremount!
if birthright citizenship by the soil were allowed then the US would have no control over who becomes an American citizen.
Any country with the wherewithal could send millions of their pregnant women to the US, either as a tourist or illegally, have them give birth to a newly minted American... and those kids in 20 years would come back and overthrow the govt using the vote.
this was never the intention of those who passed the 14th and they discussed it as such (we have the notes).
indeed, the language is in the 14th to nullify such a possibility using the phrase ‘and subject to the jurisdiction thereof.’
📌
Ping
What you note has already occurred.
Mexico literally pushed 1/3 of their population into this country knowing that these misuses of our laws would allow them to simply repopulate large parts of the US and install their own people who would divert money and power to Mexico.
It’s a fact now in California, Arizona, NM and Texas.
No going back short of civil war.
BTTT
It’s nice to be supportive but amicus is just a hell yeah
if they cannot prove legal immigration of their lineage then they’ll be deported as illegals.
1884 is early? It's after the 14th Amendment was ratified.
-PJ
I look forward to President Trump someday bestowing the Presidential Medal of Freedom on John C. Eastman.
IMHO, the best statement in the Claremont brief came on Page 20: “Accordingly, any interpretation of the Citizenship Clause must proceed from the foundational principle of mutual consent and allegiance, not from the feudal doctrine of perpetual subjectship imposed by location of birth.”
Not a chance in hell of that.
Fifteen million in California alone, their children now 52% of kids under 18 here.
White children are about 18%, a small, hated minority for the first time since 1848.
Southern California is now overwhelmingly Mexican. NorCal is Asian or Indian.
It’s not “America” here anymore, the Anchor Babies dominate the schools. They will bring in millions more legally as time moves on, so that eventually there won’t be anyone in Mexico who doesn’t have a sponsoring relative in the US.
Like I said, what you pointed out as a path to infiltration and domination has occurred.
yes, but we’re finally going to have SCOTUS point out the facts.
that’s when they’ll really start crying.
doesn’t matter if their grandparents snuck in during the 60s... they’re still illegal. GTFO.
https://www.montebelloca.gov/our_community/about_montebello/mayors_of_montebello
Note the ethnicity of the mayors of montebello starting in 1920...and what it is now since about 35 years ago.
They are not leaving. On the contrary, with the help of the so-called US Supreme Court, they are dug in.
It’s like this all over SoCal and the Southwest.
They aren’t “the Americans”.
for later
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