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Comment by Spoom | Hacker News Reader

Executive orders cannot overrule the Constitution.

14th Amendment:

"All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside."

There are rumblings about "subject to the jurisdiction thereof" somehow excluding folks based on their immigration status, but frankly, the meaning is clear, and jurisprudence recognizes this. The jurisdiction carveout is for international diplomats, i.e. people who are literally not subject to US law. Immigrants, even illegal immigrants, are subject to US law. Stating otherwise would have vast repercussions.

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> Executive orders cannot overrule the Constitution.

And I would hope this is a fairly universally held position, not so partisan. Today one side might cheer an executive order overriding the 14th amendment, but how will they feel if the next administration decides to pull the same stunt with the 2nd?

We don't want to go there. There are already some states experimenting with doing end-runs around the Constitution with their own civil laws, and for similar reasons I would expect rational people to want that effort to fail.

>> Executive orders cannot overrule the Constitution.

> I would hope this is a fairly universally held position, not so partisan.

I agree. I think the constitution limits both the executive and the legislative branches.

> how will they feel if the next administration decides to pull the same stunt with the 2nd?

The 2nd amendment has already been overridden by federal laws without a constutional amendment.

The 2nd used to mean that the states has a right to let their citizens arm themselves privately with military weapons. The federal government was forbidden by the 2nd to interfere with this.

I'm from Europe and fine with the very restrictive licensing we have here.

But it looks very shortsighted to wildly re-interpret the constitution far outside of the original meaning, instead of passing new amendments.

> The 2nd used to mean that the states has a right to let their citizens arm themselves privately with military weapons

In particular, at the time that it was written, it meant arm themselves with military weapons for the purposes of military action. That's what the contemporary use of the term "bear arms" was understood to mean. Try to find any mention of self-defense from back then. It wasn't what they were thinking about.

Or look at this earlier version: “A well regulated militia, composed of the body of the people, being the best security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed, but no one religiously scrupulous of bearing arms, shall be compelled to render military service in person.”

That conscientious objector clause at the end certainly gives some context to the discussion.

The modern interpretation of the second amendment is very different.

> In particular, at the time that it was written, it meant arm themselves with military weapons for the purposes of military action. That's what the contemporary use of the term "bear arms" was understood to mean. Try to find any mention of self-defense from back then. It wasn't what they were thinking about.

That's what I meant too. I didn't bring up self-defense, did I?

The 2nd amendment protects the states' right to build up their own state militias by allowing their citizens to arm themselves with military weapons. It forbids the federal government from interfering with this.

> The modern interpretation of the second amendment is very different.

Yes. The federal "assault weapons ban" is completely incompatible with the 2nd amendment.

This was pushed through without a new amendment. Instead people used linguistic acrobatics to re-interpret the meaning of the 2nd amendment.

It would have been a lot easier today to shut down any attempts to re-interpret the 14th amendment if we hadn't started down this path with the 2nd.

Thanks for the detailed answer, I think that'll be a relief for many. However, would you say this still is a volatile situation for people who are facing this issue? Are the rulings _final_ on this? Or is there chance of people getting stuck in limbo?

> Thanks for the detailed answer, I think that'll be a relief for many. However, would you say this still is a volatile situation for people who are facing this issue? Are the rulings _final_ on this? Or is there chance of people getting stuck in limbo?

No, rulings are not final. SCOTUS could and very well may disagree with more than a hundred years of jurisprudence and overrule e.g. US v. Wong Kim Ark[1], enabling much easier denaturalization by the federal government. Here's an example article from a right-wing think tank about why they believe SCOTUS should overrule Ark[2].

1. https://www.oyez.org/cases/1850-1900/169us649

2. https://americanmind.org/features/the-case-against-birthrigh...

> 2. https://americanmind.org/features/the-case-against-birthrigh...

That seems like a very good demonstration of the pitfalls of originalist interpretations of the Constitution. Even then, the argument comes off as extremely weak. And it doesn't even begin to try and address the consequences of reinterpreting the meaning of "and subject to the jurisdiction thereof".

Are conservatives envisioning a new class of slaves? People born on US soil who have none of the protections of the Constitution? Even if that is not the goal, it's not hard to imagine that there would be far-reaching consequences from deciding that the Constitution was not a limit on the behavior of government, but in fact only applied to citizens. What a massive bump in power for the bureaucrats in DC.

Heck, we could just snatch people off the street and declare they cannot prove they are a citizen therefore they have no Constitutional protections. No right to due process so they can prove they're a citizen, nothing like that. Better plan on carrying your passport at all times (and hope it doesn't get ... lost).

> Heck, we could just snatch people off the street and declare they cannot prove they are a citizen therefore they have no Constitutional protections.

I'm not sure if you intended this as a joke, but this is happening now, even if you do have proof of citizenship on you[1]:

> Congressman Bennie Thompson, ranking member of the House Homeland Security Committee, reported that “ICE officials have told us that an apparent biometric match by Mobile Fortify is a “definitive” determination of a person’s status and that an ICE officer may ignore evidence of American citizenship—including a birth certificate” when the app says a person is undocumented.

1. https://www.aclu.org/news/privacy-technology/ice-face-recogn...

Those words in the Constitution are just words. They can be interpreted away by the Supreme Court.

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