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Supreme Court upholds broad conception of birthright citizenship

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Re: Supreme Court upholds broad conception of birthright citizenship

#441

Post by rayiner »

coldtea wrote: post #437
phainopepla2 wrote: post #345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Following the implications of this argument leads to some pretty hairy places. If a person is incapable of reasoning outside of their class/race/gender/etc position, then how is a fair law even possible? Or perhaps the argument implies that people like that constitutional scholar have reached a state of purely detached enlightenment, and thus are exempt from this logic?

> If a person is incapable of reasoning outside of their class/race/gender/etc position, then how is a fair law even possible? An entirely fair law might not be possible, at least as long as people with specific class/race/gender interests overwhelmingly influence it. But a somewhat fair law or a law fairer than another, is. And, at least as I understand it, the scholar doesn't say that nobody is ever "capable of rea…

> Just that those making the constitution weren't that good at it.

They were exceedingly good at it. In my country’s constitution we have all sorts of things from the american constitution, like due process, because we literally have no indigenous words for these concepts.

Re: Supreme Court upholds broad conception of birthright citizenship

#442

Post by archagon »

mothballed wrote: post #439
archagon wrote: post #428

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Congress defines… historical precedent… but we were talking about a plain-text reading of the Constitution.

We weren't, if we were this conversation couldn't get here. If we were you couldn't play the militia fuck fuck game, since the right to keep and bear arms is ascribed to the people and not the militia. The answer is easy in the plain-text case, whether you are associated with the militia is moot, as the plain text unambiguously says the right of the people to keep and bear arms. It's only in the non plaintext case ca…

From Wikipedia:

> Until the late 20th century, there was little scholarly commentary of the Second Amendment. In the latter half of the 20th century, there was considerable debate over whether the Second Amendment protected an individual right or a collective right. The debate centered on whether the prefatory clause ("A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free State") declared the amendment's only purpose or merely announced a purpose to introduce the operative clause ("the right of the People to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed"). Scholars advanced three competing theoretical models for how the prefatory clause should be interpreted...

Re: Supreme Court upholds broad conception of birthright citizenship

#443

Post by throwawaypath »

ceejayoz wrote: post #399
tzs wrote: post #389

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That question isn't really meaningful, because commission of a crime is a basis for jurisdiction. Generally if party A commits a crime against party B jurisdiction can be claimed by (1) the country where the crime occurred, (2) the country A is a citizen of, and (3) the country B is a citizen of.

> jurisdiction can be claimed by (1) the country where the crime occurred Or the birth, as it were?

>Or the birth, as it were?

Not always. The people of American Samoa do not have birthright citizenship in the United States. They are clearly under the jurisdiction of the US.

Re: Supreme Court upholds broad conception of birthright citizenship

#444

Post by cmbuck »

graemep wrote: post #315
fmobus wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hate to be that guy, but this a pet peeve of mine that pisses me of... The term "birthright" means "a right that is derived from the circumstances of your birth". Virtually ALL countries grant citizenship by consequence of the circumstances of birth, but what circumstances they consider vary. For some countries, the circumstance is "birth happened in the soil of the country" (jus soli), for others, it's "birth was to…

In this context it is a synonym for jus soli - birth happened on the soil of the country.~ Birthright has a few other meanings in wider contexts: https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/birthri... Does it really matter if we add one more, especially as it is now a well established usage?

Yes it matters, because jus sanguinis is also a birthright and therefore "birthright citizenship" despite having no relevance to where you were born (jus soli)

Re: Supreme Court upholds broad conception of birthright citizenship

#445

Post by jghn »

coldtea wrote: post #435
deep_concern wrote: post #280

If you shift from being a living constitutionalist to a strict textualist based on the case in question, then what you really are is a machiavellian.

It's not so clear cut to me (looking from outside). It makes sense to interpret some cases in historical context and others not, because some cases are not as much affected by the difference in context. That's not being machiavellian - that's avoiding an one size fits all approach.

This is true, but then one should be able to assume that the justice wouldn't neatly fall along partisan lines whenever they choose to be an originalist or not. When it always toggles on and off ever so conveniently along partisan boundaries, that's when it looks dubious.

Re: Supreme Court upholds broad conception of birthright citizenship

#448

Post by ImJamal »

voakbasda wrote: post #26
jjallen wrote: post #7

You can be pro/fine with legal immigration (and moderate/non-partisan) and still not think birthright citizenship is a good idea (like I do). Also ~95% of countries don't have unconditional birthright citizenship. It creates perverse incentives. Reminds me of legal abortion: practically everywhere in the world has it. If you are not in that vast majority you should be taking a very close look at yourself/things. So y…

A belief held by the majority does not make it better simply for that fact. Not that long ago, the majority view was that slavery was a great thing, so I think you should see that argument falls fairly flat. Offering birthright citizenship makes the US better than 95% of the other countries. Not worse.

> Not that long ago, the majority view was that slavery was a great thing

A bit of a tangent, but is that actually the case? The highest estimate I have seen puts slave ownership at 5% of the population while the lowest puts it at 1%.

Obviously just because somebody doesn't own slaves doesn't mean they didn't support the system. There could be economic or legal reasons they couldn't own a slave.

I am just not sure that it was actually a majority view at any point in time in the US.

Re: Supreme Court upholds broad conception of birthright citizenship

#449

Post by 0xbadcafebee »

qingcharles wrote: post #326
ceejayoz wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Kavanaugh's dissent is kinda hilarious in this context. > The original constitutional principles do not change absent a constitutional amendment, but the relevant principles— both the rules and exceptions alike—must be faithfully applied not only to circumstances as they existed in 1787, 1791, and 1868, for example, but also to modern situations that were unknown or unanticipated by the Constitution’s Framers. This,…

I've laughed ever since United States v. Jones (2012), the GPS tracker-stuck-to-vehicle case. The justices actively debated what the historical equivalent of 24/7 digital tracking would look like in 1791. This prompted the famous hypothetical of an officer secretly squeezing into the trunk of a horse-drawn carriage to track someone's movements over several days. The issue here is that there's no practical way to ever…

Well it's a feature in that the ratification rules were part of an intentional illicit rewrite of the constitution. We could make it easier to modify like other nations, but that also makes it easier to repeal.

I think the fix is to require more political parties to be involved, so a 51% majority of a single party can't remove federal laws whenever they have a majority. Then you wouldn't need an amendment to solve controversial problems.

Re: Supreme Court upholds broad conception of birthright citizenship

#450

Post by seanmcdirmid »

thehoff wrote: post #151
fmobus wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, when I enter as a tourist, I'm not in jurisdiction? Sweet! Crime time!

Genuine question. Isn't this statement aimed at citizenship tourism or whatever its called? I used to live in a state where some new friends had told us about places that facilitated pregnant women's trips to the US solely for the purpose of staying and giving birth in the US so the child could become citizens. They then head home. I have no idea how prevalent this is.

I had a friend from Shanghai who did this. It’s completely legal, you can have a proper tourist visa and be pregnant when you enter the USA, there are hospitals in SoCal that even cater to anchor babies and will express a passport for them so the parents can return with the baby shortly after birth.

That was back in the early 2010s, I don’t think it was prevalent then (I just had too many friends with the money to do that). I don’t think it is common now because Chinese citizens have more confidence about China and so aren’t looking for backup plans anymore.

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