I can’t imagine any Court agreeing with YOUR interpretation, which reduces the phrase “and subject to the jurisdiction thereof” to a meaningless absurdity.
To reach such a conclusion, a court would have to negate the legislative history of the 14th, and its RATIFICATION history as well. It’s one thing to denigrate the author’s intention since these are his words being malinterpreted. It’s something else again to denigrate the legislatures of the ratifying States who debated and recorded the arguments for and against the 14th before acting top ratify.
One might wonder why the widely misunderstood conditioning clause of the 14th Amendment, “and subject to the jurisdiction thereof” was modified from the clause of identical import written into Civil Rights Act of 1866, which the 14th was intended to codify, “not subject to any foreign power.”
One could imagine that the second formulation, if it had used in the 14th, would have avoided much of today’s debate, driven as it is by ignorance.
The answer might be that the framers of the 14th embraced parsimony of language and felt that the economical formulation chosen would permit them to avoid inclusion of the in-artful continuance of the phrase as it appears in the Civil Rights Act “excluding Indians not taxed”. They may also have wanted to continue the tradition of not mentioning race in the Constitution.
However, the inclusion in the 14th of the initial part only of the modifying phrase as expressed as in the Civil Rights Act as “not subject to any foreign power” might have been seen as implicitly as requiring the extension of citizenship to indians, something no one intended.
So, embracing parsimony, and fully intending to recreate the full meaning of “not subject to any foreign power, excluding indians not taxed.” I imagine the framers of the 14th adopted the phrase “and subject to the jurisdiction thereof” in complete confidence that its meaning would not be lost on anyone educated in the English language and the history of the United States.
But, today, we are populated by people poorly educated in English and even more poorly educated in the history of the United States. These people are quite capable of imposing non-historical, contorted interpretations of linguistic formulations whose plain meanings ought to be beyond any question.
These people are dangerous morons. It is as if the village idiot has procreated and taken over. We are in a precarious state in our country today.
>> I can’t imagine any Court agreeing with YOUR interpretation, which reduces the phrase “and subject to the jurisdiction thereof” to a meaningless absurdity <<
Well, all I can say is that it’s too bad FR can’t act as a bookie and take our bets.