Happy Birthright Day

I predict the U.S. Supreme Court will treat this issue like they did when the Miranda warnings were challenged. The 5th Amendment, after all, merely prohibits any person in a criminal proceeding from being compelled to be a witness against himself. It does not require the arresting officer to read a certain formula to the perp word-for-word, on pain of dismissal of the case. If the suspect confesses to the crime, and there are sufficient indicia of voluntariness, he was no way compelled to speak, that should be sufficient.

But the Supreme Court, after asserting firmly that its constitutional rulings could not be legislatively overruled, preserved the Miranda warnings because by that time they were “part of our national culture” by which I reckon they meant we had all seen it on TV in hundreds of cop and detective shows.

Although as a principle of statutory construction they shouldnt and can’t just disregard the 14th Amendment’s words “and subject to the jurisdiction thereof” (contrast the 5th Amendment, which does not contain that proviso) I think the Court will end up saying that okay, so the 14th doesn’t actually require the result that anybody can sneak in here and give birth to a citizen. But that’s what people have always thought, for over a century now, so…if you wanna change this aspect of our “national culture”, you’re gonna hafta amend the 14th Amendment.

If I were a Justice, I’d rule that children of people here in violation of our laws do NOT become citizens, but I reckon I’d make the ruling prospective, as courts often do when ruling on a matter of first impression. Or would that open the ruling up to a charge of “arbitrary discrimination” because there’s no basis for distinguishing between babies born before SCOTUS’ ruling and those born after? Welp—legislation is always a matter of drawing a line, and up against that line on either side, you get the “hard cases” which proverbially make bad law.

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There’s no stare decisis involved here. The Supremes have never addressed this issue. Significant difference from the Miranda cases.

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That’s what I mean, it’s a “matter of first impression” unless you count that dicta in Wong Kim Ark.

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If the warnings are part of the culture, they are superfluous; cops should not need to recite them of everyone already knows them by heart. Yet, somehow, the Court used this fact to come to the opposite conclusion. This is example #1,817 of the Myth of the Rule of Law. The Court is almost entirely a political creature.

As for the birthright citizenship case, legal reasoning has little to do with it. Paraphrasing Beria, show me the desired result and I’ll find the reasoning. And I think we all know what the desired result is.

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The best outcome would be if the Supreme Court started a new tradition by kicking this issue back to Congress. The question of birthright citizenship is properly a political decision which should be made by the representatives of the people; it is not a legal decision. The unelected Supreme Court judges should not be acting as the supreme parliament of the US.

Of course, the absolutely worthless denizens of Congress are totally unrepresentative of the US people, and they spend their entire lives trying to avoid responsibility for anything. Let the Supreme Court put them on the spot and force them to take responsibility for making a key decision about the nature of citizenship – or at least to pass the decision on to the States in the form of a proposed Constitutional Amendment to settle the issue once & for all.

It makes little difference. If there is even a slim chance of abolishing birthright citizenship, it lies with the Court. The Congress would never approve such a measure. There an even slimmer chance of getting 3/4 of the states to agree.