Trump Is Right About Birth Citizenship

[jem]

The Radical Republicans who advanced the Thirteenth Amendment hoped to ensure broad civil and human rights for the newly freed people—but its scope was disputed before it even went into effect.[28] The framers of the Fourteenth Amendment wanted these principles enshrined in the Constitution to protect the new Civil Rights Act from being declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court and also to prevent a future Congress from altering it by a mere majority vote.[29][30] This section was also in response to violence against black people within the Southern states. The Joint Committee on Reconstruction found that only a Constitutional amendment could protect black people's rights and welfare within those states.[31]

This first section of the amendment has been the most frequently litigated part of the amendment,[32] and this amendment in turn has been the most frequently litigated part of the Constitution.[33]

Citizenship Clause
Main article: Citizenship Clause

Senator Jacob M. Howard of Michigan, author of the Citizenship Clause
The Citizenship Clause overruled the Supreme Court's Dred Scott decision that black people were not citizens and could not become citizens, nor enjoy the benefits of citizenship.[34][35] Some members of Congress voted for the Fourteenth Amendment in order to eliminate doubts about the constitutionality of the Civil Rights Act of 1866,[36] or to ensure that no subsequent Congress could later repeal or alter the main provisions of that Act.[37] The Civil Rights Act of 1866 had granted citizenship to all persons born in the United States if they were not subject to a foreign power, and this clause of the Fourteenth Amendment constitutionalized this rule.

There are varying interpretations of the original intent of Congress and of the ratifying states, based on statements made during the congressional debate over the amendment, as well as the customs and understandings prevalent at that time.[38][39] Some of the major issues that have arisen about this clause are the extent to which it included Native Americans, its coverage of non-citizens legally present in the United States when they have a child, whether the clause allows revocation of citizenship, and whether the clause applies to illegal immigrants.[40]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourteenth_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution

 

[Max E.]

So if its a living document you should have no problem with the the rights interpretation of it, funny how those lefties who believe that will suddenly switch to being rigid constitutionalists when it supports their cause.

It will be interesting to see how the so-called rigid "Constitutionalists" on this site are going to justify their wanting to "reframe" the 14th Amendment. The very people who previously refused to accept any change whatsoever.

It is only the doofus Right that regards the Constitution as being set in stone. Thinking people regard it as a living document.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Living_Constitution

 

[AAAintheBeltway]

There is a certain irony that the post Civil War republicans forced this Amendment on unwilling Southern states, and now that they depend on those same states for their survival, the 14th Amendment threatens to destroy them via a massive influx of new democrat voters.

 

[Frederick Foresight]

So if its a living document you should have no problem with the the rights interpretation of it, funny how those lefties who believe that will suddenly switch to being rigid constitutionalists when it supports their cause.

Enter the 2nd Amendment...

See how that works?

 

[piezoe]

the left at work.
you are aggravated by scalia rewriting things and not accepting the language as written?
How about what Roberts did in support of Obamacare or what the cast of leftists does with almost every law they don't like.

this is the riches trove of bullshit I have seen written by you since you gave us the soros pro pubic argument about he IRS rightly targeting conservatives.

If you wish to step up to acceptable academic levels... please include citations and tell us why what the context of what the founders meant does not matter.

it sounds to me like you are saying when reading shakespeare we should not bother to understand the context in which he was writing? To me that means you prefer to be ignorant and mis half the humor the poltiical barbs and some of drama.

Jem, your a good man, but that's not it. I'm amused because Scalia has claimed that he is a strict constructionist, although he is every bit as activist when interpreting our two Century old Constitution as the other judges. That is what I find humorous. It turns out Scalia has good reason to "hide his head in a bag." Tee Hee.

By the way I wouldn't want judges on the court who are strict constructionists. I want them to think and interpret in the light of modern society, because that is the only way that 200 year old rag can still half way work for us today. That doesn't mean we necessarily agree with their interpretation.

This is the BS part of ET, politics and religion, so naturally I am not inclined to waste my time 'stepping up to acceptable academic levels', as you put it. Feel free to do that yourself, if so inclined. I won't mind.

 

[piezoe]

yes, I use to spend my winters in Mexico. If you want to see what a right wing world with no safety net looks like, that is the place to go. The Mexican border was open for many years, people could cross both ways at will. And then Du pont started the war on drugs to crowd out hemp competition for their nylon rope. And that was the beginning of sorrows. 13 million illegal aliens and who knows how many locked up in prison for drugs. If you want to go back to when America was great, just go back to the years when the border was open and pot was legal.

I sense that there is nostalgia for the pre-nylon age in evidence here. Can a bumper sticker be made out of that, I wonder? How 'bout, "Just Say No to Nylon!" or maybe "We Were Happier with Hemp."

 

[piezoe]

Nothing scared about it. Immigration is the "most important issue facing the country" to only 7% of the adult population. He won't be able to play the fear card forever.

Careful there, reality is boring and has no entertainment value. This is the politics and Religion forum. Too much reality could ruin it for everyone.

 

[jem]

I am not surprised you have a leftist approach to interpretation of the constitution law.

However...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Originalism


Bret Boyce described the origins of the term originalist as follows: The term "originalism" has been most commonly used since the middle 1980s and was apparently coined by Paul Brest in The Misconceived Quest for the Original Understanding.[1] It is often asserted that originalism is synonymous with strict constructionism.[5][6][7][8]


Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia is a firm believer in originalism
Both theories are associated with textualist and formalist schools of thought, but there are pronounced differences between them. Justice Scalia differentiates the two by pointing out that, unlike an originalist, a strict constructionist would not acknowledge that he uses a cane means he walks with a cane (because, strictly speaking, this is not what he uses a cane means).[9] Scalia has averred that he is "not a strict constructionist, and no-one ought to be"; he goes further, calling strict constructionism "a degraded form of textualism that brings the whole philosophy into disrepute".[10]

Originalism is a theory of interpretation, not construction.[11] However, this distinction between "interpretation" and "construction" is controversial and is rejected by many nonoriginalists as artificial. As Scalia has said, "the Constitution, or any text, should be interpreted [n]either strictly [n]or sloppily; it should be interpreted reasonably"; once originalism has told a Judge what the provision of the Constitution means, they are bound by that meaning—but the business of Judging is not simply to know what the text means (interpretation), but to take the law's necessarily general provisions and apply them to the specifics of a given case or controversy (construction). In many cases, the meaning might be so specific that no discretion is permissible, but in many cases, it is still before the Judge to say what a reasonable interpretation might be. A judge could, therefore, be both an originalist and a strict constructionist—but he is not one by virtue of being the other.

To put the difference more explicitly, both schools take the plain meaning of the text as their starting point, but have different approaches that can best be illustrated with a fictitious example.

Suppose that the Constitution contained (which it obviously does not) a provision that a person may not be "subjected to the punishments of hanging by the neck, beheading, stoning, pressing, or execution by firing squad". A strict constructionist might interpret that clause to mean that the specific punishments mentioned above were unconstitutional, but that other forms of capital punishment were permissible. For a strict constructionist, the specific, strict reading of the text is the beginning and end of the inquiry.

For an originalist, however, the text is the beginning of the inquiry, and two originalists might reach very different results, not only from the strict constructionist, but from each other. "Originalists can reach different results in the same case" (see What originalism is not—originalism is not always an answer in and of itself, infra); one originalist might look at the context in which the clause was written, and might discover that the punishments listed in the clause were the only forms of capital punishment in use at that time, and the only forms of capital punishment that had ever been used at the time of ratification. An originalist might therefore conclude that capital punishment in general, including those methods for it invented since ratification, such as the electric chair, are not constitutional. Another originalist may look at the text and see that the writers created a list. He would assume that the authors intended this to be an exhaustive list of objectionable executions. Otherwise, they would have banned capital punishment as a whole, instead of listing specific means of punishment. He would rule that other forms of execution are constitutional.

Note that originalists would agree that, if the original meaning of the text could be ascertained, that meaning governs. Where they disagree, as in this example, is about exactly how to find that meaning. For example, any originalist or even a strict constructionist might apply the canon of construction expressio unius est exclusio alterius, which presumes that when an author includes one example he intends to exclude others. If that canon is appropriate in the example here, all originalist interpreters would likely reach the same result. Contrast this with a "living constitutional" interpretation, which might find that, although the text itself only prohibits certain methods, those methods are examples of particularly unpleasant methods of execution; therefore, the text invites modern readers to extend its principle to those forms of punishment we now find particularly unpleasant.

Jem, your a good man, but that's not it. I'm amused because Scalia has claimed that he is a strict constructionist, although he is every bit as activist when interpreting our two Century old Constitution as the other judges. That is what I find humorous. It turns out Scalia has good reason to "hide his head in a bag." Tee Hee.

By the way I wouldn't want judges on the court who are strict constructionists. I want them to think and interpret in the light of modern society, because that is the only way that 200 year old rag can still half way work for us today. That doesn't mean we necessarily agree with their interpretation.

This is the BS part of ET, politics and religion, so naturally I am not inclined to waste my time 'stepping up to acceptable academic levels', as you put it. Feel free to do that yourself, if so inclined. I won't mind.

 

[AAAintheBeltway]

Enter the 2nd Amendment...

See how that works?

No I don't. The Court interpreted the Second Amendment to give "the people" a personal right to keep and bear arms, whcih was exactly in line with the Founders' intent as shown by contemporary practice at the time of adoption.

There has not been a controlling case on illegals' right to use the birth citizenship clause, although there are compelling arguments against their right to do so. There is one old poorly reasoned case that granted the child of a legal immigrant citizenship under it.

 

[Frederick Foresight]