Mark Geragos

There are those sort of narrow exceptions for ambassador of foreign public ships.

Tribal Indians is an enormous one that they were very focused on in the debates as well.

But what I do is I invite the court to look at the intervening step, which is the enactment of the Civil Rights Act of 1866.

And there they didn't say subject to the jurisdiction thereof.

there it says not subject to any foreign power now if you go back to blackstone in calvin's case they say it does not matter if you are subject to any foreign power if you are born in the king's domains you have this indefeasible duty of allegiance to the king at any time so there's a clear repudiation in the civil rights act the civil rights act is this breakwater which makes it very very clear that they are not thinking about allegiance in the terms of like the british common law

They've adopted the Republican conception of allegiance.

So it's from not subject to any foreign power.

I think if you look at the structure of that statute, where it's 1401A and then B through H, it says these are the people who are entitled to birthright citizenship.

A is the constitutional standard, and then B through H are all the categories that Congress has superadded to that.

I think the natural inference is that Congress is codifying, which it was consciously doing in 1941, pulling all the naturalization rules and immigration rules together into one statute.

It said

You go to one place, here's who is a birthright citizen.

A, those who are guaranteed that right by the citizenship clause, and B through H are the ones that Congress has added through its naturalization power.

So that inference to me says, A is merely, it's not trying to change or alter the constitutional standard.

It's just saying, hey, the baseline is what the Constitution says, and we codify that, and then we move on to the new category.

We don't change our plates every morning, just so you know.

It'll be the same plate when you come talk to us later.

That's fine.

U.S.

citizen.