The Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy has just published a symposium issue on the birthright citizenship debate. The focus of those contributions is on the original meaning of birthright citizenship in the United States and in the Fourteenth Amendment. Contributors include Ilan Wurman, Gerard Magliocca, and me. I am grateful to the heroic efforts of the editors at the journal for getting this issue ready and out in such a timely manner.
My piece -- By Birth Alone: The Original Meaning of Birthright Citizenship and Subject to the Jurisdiction of the United States -- focuses on the content, scope, and qualifications of the common law rule of birthright citizenship as it developed in England and was carried into the United States and eventually embodied in the text of the Fourteenth Amendment. In doing so, it reaffirms the traditional view that birthright citizenship would extend to children of unauthorized aliens born in the United States and critiques revisionist theories old (Eastman) and new (Wurman, Lash).
From the introduction to the paper:
