Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett triggered fierce backlash from MAGA loyalists after forcefully questioning the Trump administration’s top lawyer and voicing skepticism over ending birthright citizenship during a heated Supreme Court argument.
Since taking office, Donald Trump has pushed for an executive order to end birthright citizenship, a constitutional guarantee under the 14th Amendment that grants automatic U.S. citizenship to anyone born on American soil.
During oral arguments, Barrett confronted Solicitor General Dean John Sauer, who was representing the Trump administration, over his dismissive response to Justice Elena Kagan’s concerns. Barrett sharply asked whether Sauer truly believed there was “no way” for plaintiffs to quickly challenge the executive order, suggesting that class-action certification might expedite the process.
You’re right that the USA can enforce laws only on those under its jurisdiction. But its jurisdiction extends to everyone in the USA, citizens or not. If I travel to the USA and commit a crime there, I can be arrested, tried and imprisoned in the USA unless the USA decides to deport me instead. If I’m imprisoned in the USA and my home country has an extradition treaty with the USA, my home country can decide whether it wants to go through a diplomatic process to get me returned. If I don’t have a home country (being stateless), that chance doesn’t exist. And if they don’t try to get me returned and the USA doesn’t deport me, I’m stuck in a US prison.
The same applies in other countries. When you are in a country you are under that country’s jurisdiction, meaning that the laws of the country apply to you and you can be handled by the judicial system accordingly. Every sovereign nation has the legal authority to make and enforce laws within its territory, and this authority applies to everyone physically present, not just its citizens. This principle, that a country’s laws apply to everyone in the country, is why “sovereign citizens” are basically mistaken when they claim to be beyond the law’s reach, and it’s why tourists don’t have license to go on a crime spree.
That is correct. My point is if they argue that clause of the 14th Amendment about being “subject to the jurisdiction thereof,” they would effectively make them legally untouchable.
There’s no way to interpret the 14th Amendment to accomplish what they want to accomplish.
Yes, I have been misreading your argument, but I think it’s a bit academic. You are arguing that if the government were to argue that these people were not subject to US law, in an attempt to give itself free rein to abuse them, it would undermine itself by leaving them legally untouchable so it couldn’t do anything to them. Legally that may be true, but practically the government is showing its intention to take extrajudicial action against them (like kidnapping them and trafficking them to foreign prison camps) and the law of the USA is the only thing protecting people from this treatment. So if US law didn’t apply to them they’d end up open to any kind of abuse by the US government.
In any case, illegals, invaders and terrorists are subject to US law when they’re in the USA, and that confers rights on them. That’s why the USA used Guantanamo Bay and black sites around the world to avoid having to bring people to the USA where they’d be under the protection of US law and the rights it confers. So if the US government attempted to make any legal argument that US law doesn’t apply to these people while they’re in the USA, it would be quite obviously wrong.
Right. The law is academic. I’m not saying they couldn’t shoot them dead in the street. We all know the government doesn’t always follow the law. I’m simply saying that’s the legal problem that would be created as a result of changing the interpretation of that clause, and therefore an unreasonable interpretation for a court to make.