Comment by ryandrake
6 days ago
5-4 though, yikes! This shouldn't have even been close. With an impassioned 91 page dissent by Thomas. What a chode.
6 days ago
5-4 though, yikes! This shouldn't have even been close. With an impassioned 91 page dissent by Thomas. What a chode.
6-3 with Thomas, Alito & Gorsuch dissenting
This is kind of crazy. The text of the amendment is as literal as it gets. If this had failed it would have basically meant emptying Congress of all of its powers, because now the executive can just pick whatever interpretation they deem fit to their goals and run with it.
The rule of courts of law is to interpret the law, not to pick new creative meanings out of them. That's the role of the legislative power - otherwise what's stopping a court to reinterpret the meaning of any word in any legal text and allow the executive to rule by decree
"subject to the jurisdiction thereof" is not a clear statement.
4 replies →
5-4 on the Constitution. Kavanaugh's concurrence is that birthright citizenship is controlled by a law that Congress could change.
Kavanaugh ruled that Trump's EO wasn't unconstitutional, just contrary to federal law, and Congress could change the law there if they wanted. So, this makes it only 5-4 upholding the 14th amendment.
Which is gods-damned crazy. We are that close to overturning major civil rights.
This would also overturn our ability to arrest or deport non-citizen, no? If the argument is that they are not under the jurisdiction of the US government, we cannot legally arrest or prosecute them?
This would create chaos. Not to mention the tens of millions of citizens retroactively turned into stateless people!
1 reply →
Kavanaugh agrees with their reading of the 14th Amendment, though.
I should be unanimous, it's what the constitution says. If you don't like it you need to go through the amendment process.
>I should be unanimous, it's what the constitution says
Thats a tautology. “What the constitution says” is the thing in question.
Sure, but it leads to allowing for the possibility of interpreting "..the right to bear arms.." as "you are allowed to own the limbs of an Ursus arctos".
There's plenty in the US constitution which is vaguely worded, but you have to twist its words an awful lot to deny birthright citizenship.
3 replies →
The language couldn't be any clearer. The fact that it was questioned by people with a stated motive doesn't prove otherwise.
"All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside."
> All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof ...
It's the second part that is in dispute and is not clear from the constitution's text what exactly it means and who it excludes. And yes, it has always excluded some people born within the borders, it is not a meaningless statement.
Well, no, but almost everyone inside US borders is subject to US laws. The exceptions are rare: people in foreign embassies (which is "foreign soil"), invading armies, and indigenous tribes on tribal land.
9 replies →
> subject to the jurisdiction thereof
> A well regulated Militia
POV: you're about to hear the dumbest takes on the internet.
/s
Seriously though, were the founding fathers just master ragebaiters or what? More ink has been spilled over these two lines than any other in modern history.
In the past decade, the Constitution hasn’t slowed down the courts from creatively interpreting its various clauses. Their decisions have effectively amended many of those fundamental (and arguably inalienable) rights. Repeatedly.
This trivial reading of the constitution doesn't align with the reality. Two simple exceptions and a third not so simple are children of diplomats, children of invading armies, and native americans, who required an act of congress to give citizenship at birth.
The supreme Court ruled that South Carolina could not secede from the Union because the Constitution was merely a continuation of the agreements under the articles of confederation even though all states had to withdraw from the confederation to get into the union.
After that bit of logic, nothing the supreme Court decides would surprise me