Michal R. Belknap (California Western School of Law): Citizenship is a birthright.
As regular readers know, I think Professor Belknap is right that the Fourteenth Amendment's original meaning guarantees citizenship for children born in the United States whose parents are aliens (including illegal aliens). But he goes on to say, or rather assume, that this original meaning binds us today. An originalist would say it does. But is Belknap an originalist? I don't know, but I do know that he's a distinguished historian of the Warren Court, which was (to say the least) not a very originalist Court. So a friendly question for my cross-town colleague: Does he think that many of the leading Warren Court decisions were wrongly decided? If not, is there something that justifies the Warren Court's nonoriginalism yet requires an originalist approach to the citizenship clause?
Posted at 7:00 AM