Michael Barbaro

This conclusion reflects the original public meaning of the clause.

So basically, Sauer is arguing that if you look really closely, especially at that ARC case issued by the Supreme Court many, many, many decades ago, people have been misunderstanding

this birthright citizenship precedent for a very long time, and they've allowed it to be applied too broadly to people who should not be birthright citizens, illegal immigrants especially.

Okay, so how do the justices respond to this argument?

Never a great sign.

You know, children of ambassadors, children of enemies during a hostile invasion, children on warships.

And then you expand it to a whole class of illegal aliens are here in the country.

I'm not quite sure how you can get to that big group from such tiny and sort of idiosyncratic examples.

Right.

Robert seems to be saying, you want us to get from the concept that invading pillagers of the U.S., their kids should not be American citizens, to suddenly saying that all the children of undocumented immigrants shouldn't be given birthright citizenship.

And he just doesn't quite see the line between the two.

And one of the strongest statements of this is Senator Trumbull's statement that I quoted at the beginning where he says, he's asked, what does that mean subject to the jurisdiction thereof?

And he says, it means not owing allegiance to anybody else.

That is what it means.

And it felt like the Solicitor General knew his audience, that this conservative majority on this court likes originalism, likes to go back to original sources, and that he was appealing to that background.

Right, Justice Alito pipes up at this point, and he's curious how the government's argument confronts that.

Now, the problem of temporary visitors did exist, and it's very interesting that as you look at pages 26 and 28 of our brief,

commentators going from, you know, 1881 until 1922 are uniformly saying that children of temporary visitors are not included.

Right.

She's saying, I'm listening to all your historical references, and they feel like you're really stretching and reaching because you don't have texts within the 14th Amendment on your side.