Birthright Citizenship: A Constitutional Debate in the Age of Originalism at Center for Life Enrichment at Center for Life Enrichment

The 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution provides that “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.” That this provision guarantees “birthright citizenship” to everyone except the children of foreign diplomats stood as a virtually unquestioned feature of American constitutional law for more than a century. Recently, however, a small group of conservative legal scholars has endorsed a radically different interpretation, arguing that the Constitution grants citizenship only to the children of American citizens. Although this interpretation has lingered mainly on the fringes of American constitutional law for the past two decades, President Donald Trump dramatically endorsed it in January 2025 in an executive order issued on the first day of his second term. The Supreme Court may weigh in or give some hints as to how it might resolve this issue in the near future.

This lecture will examine the history of the 14th Amendment’s citizenship clause, the arguments for and against the two competing interpretations, what these arguments can teach us about “originalism” as a method of constitutional interpretation, and the implications of the debate over birthright citizenship for American law, politics, and culture.

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