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Comment by ryandrake | Hacker News Reader

5-4 though, yikes! This shouldn't have even been close. With an impassioned 91 page dissent by Thomas. What a chode.

6-3 with Thomas, Alito & Gorsuch dissenting

This is kind of crazy. The text of the amendment is as literal as it gets. If this had failed it would have basically meant emptying Congress of all of its powers, because now the executive can just pick whatever interpretation they deem fit to their goals and run with it.

The rule of courts of law is to interpret the law, not to pick new creative meanings out of them. That's the role of the legislative power - otherwise what's stopping a court to reinterpret the meaning of any word in any legal text and allow the executive to rule by decree

"subject to the jurisdiction thereof" is not a clear statement.

It has been clear to every single human being reading it for hundreds of years. It was never up to debate until some person of this administration decided to go and question the meaning of "jurisdiction thereof". Also saying that a foreign-born person isn't subject to the jurisdiction of the country they find themselves in opens a massive can of worms - like, if the State doesn't have jurisdiction over foreign nationals, does it imply it's not legally allowed to arrest them for instance? Two can play the same game and find infinite loopholes even in the clearest of texts.

This goes beyond the value of citizenship by birth, which I'm neither in favour nor against (personally I think that just sanguinis is nonsensical, but so is to automatically give citizenship even to accidental passer-bys), it's all about whether the law still carries any "evident" meaning or whether it can be spun around depending on political necessity, which is bad

You didn't read the decision, it was up for debate in 1898 Wong Kim Ark. Every justice cites it. Wong Kim Ark gives 4 exceptions, and it isn't clear if those exceptions are comprehensive or not.

And you didn't read the majority's breakdown of `subject to the jurisdiction`'s historical meaning, otherwise you would know that the power to arrest is not the same concept.

You have made false claims and appears you are commenting on something you haven't read.

It’s as clear as it gets. If a random tourist commits a felony in Nevada you wouldn’t be questioning if he should be subject to Nevada’s jurisdiction.

5-4 on the Constitution. Kavanaugh's concurrence is that birthright citizenship is controlled by a law that Congress could change.

Kavanaugh ruled that Trump's EO wasn't unconstitutional, just contrary to federal law, and Congress could change the law there if they wanted. So, this makes it only 5-4 upholding the 14th amendment.

Which is gods-damned crazy. We are that close to overturning major civil rights.

This would also overturn our ability to arrest or deport non-citizen, no? If the argument is that they are not under the jurisdiction of the US government, we cannot legally arrest or prosecute them?

This would create chaos. Not to mention the tens of millions of citizens retroactively turned into stateless people!

These Calvinball judges would never let logic or consistency control their decisions to that extent.

Kavanaugh agrees with their reading of the 14th Amendment, though.

I should be unanimous, it's what the constitution says. If you don't like it you need to go through the amendment process.

>I should be unanimous, it's what the constitution says

Thats a tautology. “What the constitution says” is the thing in question.

Sure, but it leads to allowing for the possibility of interpreting "..the right to bear arms.." as "you are allowed to own the limbs of an Ursus arctos".

There's plenty in the US constitution which is vaguely worded, but you have to twist its words an awful lot to deny birthright citizenship.

Yes, and they can do that if they wanted to. The Supreme Court has the power to interpret the Constitution.

If we live in a world where words have no meaning and the definition of the Constitution can be interpreted to be literally anything depending on today's mood of the Supreme Court, why even bother writing a Constitution at all?

Why not get rid of the whole charade and just replace it with "whoever is appointed to the Supreme Court can make up any law as they feel like it"? It has the same meaning, but it's an awful lot clearer!

In fact, I think there's a term for a ruler with complete power who's there for life, something like an "absolute monarchy"?

And if they do enough of that, the other two branches might eventually be motivated to take action to counter it, like packing the courts or impeachments. Or telling SCOTUS to enforce it, as one president did.

The language couldn't be any clearer. The fact that it was questioned by people with a stated motive doesn't prove otherwise.

"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."

> All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof ...

It's the second part that is in dispute and is not clear from the constitution's text what exactly it means and who it excludes. And yes, it has always excluded some people born within the borders, it is not a meaningless statement.

Well, no, but almost everyone inside US borders is subject to US laws. The exceptions are rare: people in foreign embassies (which is "foreign soil"), invading armies, and indigenous tribes on tribal land.

So if you follow the logic of this administration (which I don't) you can construe the illegal immigrants as an invasion. You would assume that if there was an invading army that got dispersed and the stragglers were hiding out for years after the state surrendered, like some Japanese soldiers after WW2, as the law enforcement was trying to find and remove them, the jurisdiction would not apply to them. Then, there could be a wartime state sponsored guerilla force. Then, allegedly state affiliated guerilla force infiltrating without an official conflict, like Russians in Donetsk in 2015. You have to draw a line somewhere, and in theory it could be pretty far either way

> subject to the jurisdiction thereof

> A well regulated Militia

POV: you're about to hear the dumbest takes on the internet.

Seriously though, were the founding fathers just master ragebaiters or what? More ink has been spilled over these two lines than any other in modern history.

In the past decade, the Constitution hasn’t slowed down the courts from creatively interpreting its various clauses. Their decisions have effectively amended many of those fundamental (and arguably inalienable) rights. Repeatedly.

This trivial reading of the constitution doesn't align with the reality. Two simple exceptions and a third not so simple are children of diplomats, children of invading armies, and native americans, who required an act of congress to give citizenship at birth.

The supreme Court ruled that South Carolina could not secede from the Union because the Constitution was merely a continuation of the agreements under the articles of confederation even though all states had to withdraw from the confederation to get into the union.

After that bit of logic, nothing the supreme Court decides would surprise me

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