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PaperclipPerfector  6d ago (text post)   20430 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of June 22, 2026

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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.

“subject to the jurisdiction” needs to mean something

It means that an exception is made for children born to diplomatic personnel, invading troops or their camp followers, and Indians Native Americans Amerindians Indigenous people First Nations whatever 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.

It's not like a diplomat (or his child) can commit a homicide and the US will just ignore it and not prosecute.

A law-review article provides several counterexamples.

  • 1987: A Papua New Guinea diplomat, driving drunk, crashes into several parked cars, injuring one person severely and another minorly.

  • 1984: Libyans shoot at a protest in front of their embassy in Britain, killing a police officer and injuring 11 other people.

  • 1984: British customs officials discover a crate that contains Israeli mercenaries and a Nigerian emigré whom the mercenaries have kidnapped and are trying to smuggle out, accompanied by a Nigerian diplomat.

  • 1981: Strong evidence indicates that the son of a Ghanaian diplomat has raped several women in the USA.

  • 1982: The son of a Brazilian diplomat shoots a bouncer in the USA.

None of these incidents resulted in prosecution of the person covered by diplomatic immunity.

But see Gueorgui Makharadze (1997). Dui homicide. We held him in the country for years then prosecuted him.

Diplomatic immunity is like the pirates code in the Johnny Depp movies, "the code is more what you'd call guidelines than actual rules."

Gueorgui Makharadze

The Georgian government waived Makharadze's immunity - which is within the rules. (The immunity belongs to the sending state, not the diplomat). But the US would not have had jurisdiction without Georgia's permission.

My understanding of first-world diplomatic culture is that most first-world countries would waive immunity if a diplomat committed a serious crime unrelated to their official duties. But it is also the case that no first world country would appoint the kind of person who commits serious crimes as a diplomat, so real-world cases are vanishingly rare. It is also worth noting that the US has a double standard on this specific point, and does not waive immunity when its diplomats commit vehicular manslaughter in foreign countries.

Well, you are also missing the category where if you are an old grizzled cop you can revoke the immunity after shooting the criminal diplomat.

Has that ever happened? I don't know, and I would be interested in what the response was.

[It is worth noting that the reason why diplomatic immunity is so broad is to present this type of thing being arranged as a plausibly deniable way to murder negotiators]

It was a joke reference to lethal weapon II

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