Nah, just goes to show that willful ignorance exists all over the planet.
Welcome to the club.
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I don’t think you can. They have no authority to alter other than as otherwise set out in the Constitution.
A motivated court can find room for anything but if you’ve got to that point, the whole charade is over in any event.
The Supreme Court has always been pretty hot on its own prerogatives and ‘conservative’ appointments even more so. The trouble with appointing ‘conservative’ justices is that they tend to be hot on things like keeping states and courts from interfering in areas that are in their view reserved for Congress or the President. That also means they tend to be hot on preventing interference by Congress and the President in areas that are not their domain.
Interpreting the meaning of the Constitution is firmly in the area the Supreme Court considers its prerogative.
Yes, I expressed myself rather too briefly/badly in my original post. Hopefully, the amendment and the text above makes clear that I fundamentally agree with you that the President can’t decide to make rules about citizenship by executive order.
The President of course by definition cannot make ‘appropriate legislation’. He does have a duty to ensure that legislation is ‘faithfully executed’ which provides a rather large amount of wriggle room but importantly does not mean that if he says that non-citizen’s children born in the US are not citizens, that that is the law.
He can say that is his interpretation and order his officials to act accordingly but that is subject to challenge.
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Well, that’s exactly the point, not all US Territories are the same. This article has a reasonable run-down:
The other territories you mention also don’t have a constitutional right to citizenship by birth. Theirs comes through a different Act of Congress.
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In the case of a blue wave, you can bet that it’s going to be a busy lame duck session until January.
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Hmm. Blood. Soil. You may be on to something here…
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Just like the Muslim ban wouldn’t succeed at any court level?
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To be fair, I think in this case, we’re talking something that is much harder to game. The wording of the 14th amendment is relatively explicit. That being said, I would have thought that about the travel ban, too, but they managed to narrow it enough to get it through…
I dunno.
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That is terrifyingly true.
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I suggest you look at Scalia’s interpretation of “equal protection” not applying to females or gays, but only to white men, “because that is how the founders originally meant it.” I did not have a full appreciation of how much of a shithead he was until I saw some of this shit.
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Well it didn’t.
What succeeded was a completely redrafted order which bore no real relation to what Trump wanted to do.
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For reference.
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I’m aware. But again, the 14th was a reconstruction amendment, and there originalist interpretation would work against racists views, because it explicitly was added to ensure that black Americans were citizens. The intent of the radical republicans who drafted it was crystal clear.
Also, Scalia is dead… and I think only 2 members of the court are originalist like him - Thomas and Kavanaugh. Maybe Gorsuch, but I’m not sure.
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Except of course that it is fairly certain that the people proposing the amendment meant exactly what it says. An originalist approach is the last thing that one would want to apply here.
That’s not to say someone like Scalia couldn’t have wangled his opinion round to saying that they didn’t mean “everyone born here who isn’t a Native American or foreign diplomat” but it would be pretty difficult.
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And this is why I hate religious and legal fundamentalists.
They strip off all the layers of careful interpretations, precedents, informed discussion, work-arounds, and bloody battles, that have built up over the centuries around their holy text. And then they heap their own interpretations and biases on top of it, with the false claim that their new version is the pure and original intent.
They shouldn’t be asking “What was the Founders’ intent?” so much as they should be asking “If the current situation was explained to the Founders, what would they say?”
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Heresy! Blasphemer!
More seriously, I think originalists would say that is what they are doing. They’re looking at what the Founders meant at the time to try and find out the basic principle which they then try to apply to the current issue.
In most cases the answer they come up with seems to be “they meant you lot in Congress to deal with this”.
To be fair that’s probably true.
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That is not true at all. Children of an invading army are still subject to the jurisdiction of the United States. They are civilians and not subject to the same treatment as invading foreign soldiers. Diplomats and pre-1924 Native Americans are not prosecutable under our laws (therefor not subject to the jurisdiction of the US).
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The whole line of argument is stupid.
The 14th Amendment was created in response to the very gaps in thinking and clear errors made by the Founders at the outset.
BTW the drafters of the 14th Amendment very much meant birthright citizenship as the debate came up at the time it was being worked on.
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The subtext of many originalists is that they’re never going to say that after careful consideration, what we have now is what the Founders intended, never mind, carry on.
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And the doubling down begins…
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Weird, last time I checked, Paul Ryan’s actual and specific job was to give and guide opinions on laws and the Constitution.
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