I recently joined two distinguished figures in legal scholarship, Gabriel Chin and Paul Finkelman, for an online session organized by the Cato Institute.
Recently I joined two distinguished figures in legal scholarship, Gabriel Chin and Paul Finkelman, for an online session organized by the Cato Institute. The discussion was titled “Trump v. Barbara: Birthright Citizenship at the Supreme Court.” I was accompanied by renowned immigration-law expert Prof. Gabriel Chin (UC Irvine) and celebrated legal historian Paul Finkelman (University of Toledo). Dan Greenberg from the Cato Institute served as moderator. A recording of the event is provided below:
A portion of my remarks drew from my recent article in Lawfare, where I argued that the Trump Administration’s justifications for denying birthright citizenship to children of undocumented immigrants, if applied consistently, would also remove that right from many freed slaves and their descendants, as well as other Black Americans, thereby undermining the central objective of the Citizenship Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. This issue was raised by Justice Amy Coney Barrett during last month’s Supreme Court oral argument.
I also referenced my post on the Volokh Conspiracy blog, where I explained that although birthright citizenship is preferable to the currently available options, it represents a second-best policy rather than the optimal solution for addressing questions of migration and citizenship.
