According to Eastman there is no law but acquiescence by the government. Excerpted from the article.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2509715/posts
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"Dr. John C. Eastman, Dean of Chapman University’s law school in Orange, California, is among the leading scholars in the nation on constitutional law and has testified before Congress on the issue of birthright citizenship...
According to Eastman, the real shift in popular perception began to take root in the late 1960s, when the idea that mere birth on American soil alone ensured citizen status.
“I have challenged every person who has taken the opposite position to tell me what it was that led to this new notion,” he said. “There’s not an executive order. There’s not a court decision. We just gradually started assuming that birth was enough.”
Eastman attributes some of it to our nation’s loss of an intrinsic understanding of the language that the framers of the 14th Amendment spoke and used in that era, ergo a century later the phrase “subject to the jurisdiction” has been watered down in the collective American consciousness to require little more than an adherence to traffic safety laws. ... "
What Eastman says is what I have thought... it just started. But someone had to wonder if giving such citizenship was legal? Did someone in some courthouse just start by issuing a Birth Certificate and seeing what happened? How do you have your citizenship? I have nothing other than my Birth Certificate that started the assumption that I am a citizen.
Some counties in South Texas are now refusing to issue Birth Certificates to children of illegals... bully for them.
Still, what does Eastman have to say about U.S. vs. Ark? It seems that has to be addressed. I will read the article carefully.
I think SCOTUS was wrong in 1898... SCOTUS has proven to be wrong often and instead of applying the law have interpreted it for the time at hand and the public opinion of the time at hand... they have done this for a long, long time.