Prior to the passage and ratification of the 14th Amendment, did we as a nation have the collective power to enact an Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, setting forth a restriction of some kind (the nature of which is not important to this question) on individuals born in U.S. states to U.S. citizen parents, pursuant to which a given individual born in a U.S. state to U.S. citizen parents could potentially be determined, say, by a U.S. district court judge, to not be a U.S. citizen, and moreover, to not ever have been a U.S. citizen, due to a demonstrated failure of such requirement?
The people, organized as States, exericise their sovereign power to amend the current Constitution, or to write a new Constitution, and it may say whatever they damn please. They are the sovereigns and the source of all political power. They delegate their power to the government they create. Exercising their sovereign power, the people can dictate any requirement to be President or a citizen. Their only restraint is not raw power, but a presumed lack of political support to ratify some truly radical idea. As a collective group, the sovereign power of the people is without limit. It is the sovereign power of a king, but exercised by the People.
This is distinguished from the previous example involving the powers of Congress which are distinctly limited. Sometimes they act beyond their authorized power and get slapped down on appeal to the Courts. From the sovereign act of the People, there is no appeal but to the People. The government cannot strike down or amend the Constitution. That requires another act of the People.
Caution is recommended with the Constitution as unintended consequences may be difficult to undo.
The 14th Amendment clearly authorized anchor babies.
The 16th was marketed as a small tax of 1% base rate, and starting at $20,000, an additional tax of 1%, rising to 6% at over $500,000. $20,000 in 1913 would be equivalent to about $518,000 today. It was a tax on the rich to ease the burdens of the poor. Gack! That was a marketing campaign to get the rubes to delegate the power to tax income without apportionment. It succeeded. The authority to tax was granted. The words ratified did not limit the grant of authority to the tax that was proposed.
The unapportioned income tax, and the Internal Revenue to collect it, did not start after the 16th Amendment. It actually began in earnest during the civil war. It was totally unconstitutional, but Lincoln did it, so it got a pass for decades.
The 17th was probably a mistake. The Framers had the right idea.
Just sayin'. Act with care.
Well put, Woodpusher.
Who’s to stop the people in a country from amending their constitution in a foolish way?
According to some estimates, up to 70 percent of citizens in the U.S. meet the Minor v. Happersett definition of NBC. One would think that nobody would even consider monkeying with the natural citizenship-transmitting power of such a large cohort of his countrymen. Given what has happened in the last two months in response to the novel Coronavirus pandemic though, particularly how people in blue states have been treated by their Governors, law enforcement officers (and even pharmacists!), who knows what a small minority of would-be tyrants could or would be capable of doing (not wanting to let a crisis go to waste, as it were!).