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Does SCOTUS normally "save the best till last"? We have seen a flurry of opinions at the end of the term, and they appear to be in roughly increasing order of importance, with no sign of the 3-4 biggest cases, which I think are:
The first three are all "Is this even the same Constitution?" level cases, and noisy idiots on both sides think that Watson is a "Do we still have a functioning democracy?" question, although in my view it is an unimportant technicality of election law. I would say the only cases of this importance which have been decided are Learning Resources (the tariffs) and Callais (race-based redistricting), both of which had strong practical reasons for the majority pushing a decision as fast as possible. Cook and Slaughter weren't even argued late in the term.
So the question I am asking is whether the justices are holding the biggest cases to drop together on the last day of the term out of some daft sense of drama (or more nefariously, to minimise the amount of public and press attention they get compared to dropping them separately), or is there some hitch delaying getting the opinions written. I can definitely imagine the cases being delayed because the justices are writing increasingly angry concurrences and dissents at each other, but it is also within the realms of possibility that there is still substantial haggling about getting to 5 votes. Barbara and Slaughter are both cases where a plurality opinion would embarrass the Court as well as being a practical headache.
Birthright citizenship is obviously supported by both Constitution and statute, but I imagine there's a lot of wrangling over the wording of the opinion of the court (which may be unanimous, maybe 8-1 if Alito is as much of a hack as one ex-poster claims).
The Court probably didn't consider it, but the recent California primary election demonstrates that counting late votes is at least an important technicality of election law, though California goes beyond postmarks and allows ballots with a hand-written date before the election day.
Most 2A legalize is based on pragmatism versus wording. We could easily go down that path with birthright citizenship and the Constitutional argument that birthright is limited is a lot better in my view than any of the limits they’ve put on 2A.
The non-obvious part of Birthright is clearly that “subject to the jurisdiction” needs to mean something. And that phrase can mean anything a reader wants it to be because it’s not defined anywhere and if your intellectually honest you do some kind of historical analysis or you can just not give a shit and define “jurisdiction” in the optimal way for your view.
It means that an exception is made for children born to diplomatic personnel, invading troops or their camp followers, and
IndiansNative AmericansAmerindiansIndigenous peopleFirst Nationswhatever the preferred nomenclature is this week who were considered not part of the United States.The children of diplomats exception doesn't make sense under the theories presented by the parties suing the Trump administration though. Its not like a diplomat (or their child) can commit a homicide and the US will just ignore it and not prosecute. The same is true of an Indian who wandered off a reservation in 1900 or a Canadian who drunkenly boats into American waters and rams another boat. All those people get prosecuted in American courts for said crimes. So that cannot mean what "subject to the jurisdiction" means.
The US would prosecute a US diplomat or service member because they are subject to the jurisdiction of the united states regardless of whether they are residing in the US. Foreign diplomats and service member's are not subject to US jurisdiction and so they are considered separately.
The child of a US service member born on a US military base is a US citizen even if that base is outside the US. The child of a French diplomat is a citizen of France and not the US even if they are born within US territory.
True but all this is irrelevant to my point that we can and have prosecuted foreign diplomats for crimes committed in the US while the diplomat was serving in that function.
Nobody is trying to claim those they are US citizens though is what the case is about.
The original claim that @Celestial-body-NOS was responding to was that "subject to the jurisdiction” needs to mean something and it does.
The question is about whether someone who is in the US illegally is formally under US jurisdiction or not?
When I look at historical context I think I feel 30% justified saying it was just slaves and 70% jurisdiction refers to more people.
To pass an amendment you need 2/3 of the Senate. Simplifying here today you would need 67 Senators to pass an amendment. We have different numbers today but let’s say 60 Senators voted for it believing “jurisdiction” including more than slaves and 7 Senators voted for it thinking it just meant slaves. In this case the majority of yes votes view Birthright essentially how it has functioned now but the decisive votes on the Amendment thought it just meant slaves.
So then what definition of “jurisdiction” would an origionalists use - the majority or the decisive vote?
I have no idea. My gut says a lot of people voting on the amendment were probably just voting on slave kids get citizenship.
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