Neither of the supreme court majority opinions in Trump v Barbara, the 5-4 decision upholding the constitutionality of birthright citizenship, mentions the true architect of the case. Donald Trump’s Executive Order 14160, which would deny citizenship to children born on American soil if their parents are undocumented immigrants or on temporary visas, is extensively noted, but not the man responsible for it. The omission of Stephen Miller is like Dracula without Dracula.
The vampire identified is Chief Justice Roger B Taney, author of the Dred Scott decision of 1857, though his notorious statement at the heart of his ruling went uncited: that the framers believed that Black people “had no rights which the white man was bound to respect”, that they were excluded from the Declaration of Independence’s principle that “all men are created equal” because of racial inferiority “too clear for dispute” and that rendered them no different from “an ordinary article of merchandise and traffic”.
