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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

#631

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

They were extremely good, but they were not near angelic geniuses gathered together and possessed of greater wisdom and capacity by virtue of that gathering than any people ever before or since, which is what many people who like to talk up the founding fathers would have.

They wrote the most influential constitution in the world which has governed the longest-lived extant republic. Most who claim to be smarter have offered mere ideas, never implemented in a real country. Such academic notions often self-destruct when confronted with reality. (I’m reminded of Ashraf Ghani, the professor who “wrote the book” on “Fixing Failed States.” When he was elected President of Afghanistan to actually put his ideas into practice, it was a disaster and resulted in the Taliban reconquering the country. Ideas without implementation are worth nothing.)

Re: Supreme Court upholds broad conception of birthright citizenship

#632

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Members of American Indian tribes were born in the United States after the 14th amendment was passed but it took an act of Congress to make them citizens. The question of jurisdiction is a very real one that isn’t nearly as cut and dry as you’re implying it to be.

You're trying to impute complexity to a thing in order to achieve a goal that is not achievable. The 1866 Congress that debated the amendment understood and intended that Indian tribal nations would not be covered by the clause because they were separate nations not under the jurisdiction of US law . Here's an example of the debate [1] where they discuss it. Far from making your point, examples like this make it obvi…

I kept reading pages, and there's plenty of other questionable conclusions:

[Mr. Conness] (Sen. CA)

(Acclaimed for his pro-Chinese immigration views.

Wiki: "In the Senate debate on the 14th Amendment, Conness said “We are entirely ready to accept the provision proposed in this constitutional amendment, that the children begotten of Chinese parents in California … shall be citizens.”

from the link:

"Now, I will say, for the benefit of my friend, that he may know something about the Chinese in future, that this portion of our population, namely, the children of Mongolian parentage, born in California, is very small indeed, and never promises to be large, notwithstanding our near neighborhood to the Celestial land. The habits of those people, and their religion, appear to demand that they all return to their own country at some time or other, either alive or dead. There are, perhaps, in California today about forty thousand Chinese--from forty to forty-five thousand. Those persons return invariably, while others take their places, and, as I before observed, if they do not return alive their bones are carefully gathered up and sent back to the Flowery Land. It is not an unusual circumstance that the clipper ships trading between San Francisco and China carry at a time three or four hundred human remains of these Chinese. When interred in our State they are not interred deep in the earth, but laid very near the surface, and then mounds of earth are laid over them, so that the process of dis-interment is very easy. That is their habit and custom; and as soon as they are fit for transmission to their own country they are taken up with great regularly and sent there. None of the bones are allowed to remain. They will return, then, either living or dead. "

(Sadly the site is now offline.)

Re: Supreme Court upholds broad conception of birthright citizenship

#633

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This. Getting enough states to agree on a change would be a fool's errand I think. It seems like the reds and blues can't agree on anything at all any longer.

I agree 99% with you, except when it comes to these enormous data centers. When you look at the local zoning committee meetings, you're seeing Reds, Blues and Ind mostly calling for a moratorium on build sites in their communities.

What does that have to do with anything that would plausibly be in the bill of rights?

Re: Supreme Court upholds broad conception of birthright citizenship

#634
post #625

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We were talking specific models, yes?

You said "any other gun crime", so no? How much do you think of this disparity is due to Gatling guns?

In reference to the ‘no epidemic of Gatling gun crime’ comment, yes.

What other epidemic of a specific type of gun crime is there, exactly? (And no, entire categories like ‘hand gun’ don’t count)

Re: Supreme Court upholds broad conception of birthright citizenship

#635
post #626

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fallacy here is you're trying to frame things in terms of "deserving." An African child deserves life and wealth as much as an American one. A guy slaving 16 hours a day ripping shingles off of roofs "deserves" a mansion and high-dollar escorts as much as the playboy heir of some mega-corp. Some starving African child probably deserves to rip the computer/tablet/phone you're writing this with out of your hand and…

You're fixating on the word deserve in my post, but that's got nothing to do with my point. I'm saying that the market has decided that it doesn't have to pay a living wage since the government picks up the bill to keep things going. I think that's perverse.

I'm confused whether you want more welfare, or you're trying to ban jobs below a certain "living" wage floor (which are probably mostly occupied by the poorer).

There is a somewhat intermediate of this, proposed by Milton Friedman, called the negative income tax. I can't say I'm sold on the idea but it does solve some of the problems of the local maximums encountered that keep people trapped in the welfare system and from trying to get more lucrative income.

Re: Supreme Court upholds broad conception of birthright citizenship

#636
post #634

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You said "any other gun crime", so no? How much do you think of this disparity is due to Gatling guns?

In reference to the ‘no epidemic of Gatling gun crime’ comment, yes. What other epidemic of a specific type of gun crime is there, exactly? (And no, entire categories like ‘hand gun’ don’t count)

> entire categories like ‘hand gun’ don’t count

How convenient for your argument!

Why not? You aren't concerned that our murder rate is seven times that of other OECD nations, and 25x when limited to firearms?

Re: Supreme Court upholds broad conception of birthright citizenship

#637

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.

There's a difference between textualist and originalist. There isn't a dichotomy between textualist and living-constitutionalist frameworks only but the two former may overlap. Also the same reasoning you are using applies to people who are living-constitutionalists and suddenly become textualists.

https://pacificlegal.org/originalism-vs-textualism-vs-living...

Re: Supreme Court upholds broad conception of birthright citizenship

#638
post #24

The most obvious read of the constitution in the world still being a 6-3 verdict shows the state of the Supreme Court today.

I don't think it's obvious. Like why do you think the dissenters are wrong to question what is meant about being "subject to the jurisdiction thereof"? The intention was to prevent former slaves from being deprived of citizenship so what is an argument to say this obviously includes someone who arrives for birth tourism? Why doesn't this include children of diplomats, as one example, if it's such an all encompassing law?

Re: Supreme Court upholds broad conception of birthright citizenship

#639
post #24

The most obvious read of the constitution in the world still being a 6-3 verdict shows the state of the Supreme Court today.

I don't think it's obvious. Like why do you think the dissenters are wrong to question what is meant about being "subject to the jurisdiction thereof"? The intention was to prevent former slaves from being deprived of citizenship so what is an argument to say this obviously includes someone who arrives for birth tourism? Why doesn't this include children of diplomats, as one example, if it's such an all encompassing…

Because when you are in a country, you are subject to it’s jurisdiction. Can you be arrested for petty crimes? Yes? Then you’re under that country’s jurisdiction.

Re: Supreme Court upholds broad conception of birthright citizenship

#640
post #630

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this take is overly complex and silly. If you're subject to the laws, that's that. As an exercise, go read the Federal code and put each law that might potentially be applicable to people on a work visa into a pile. I guarantee that pile will be taller than you are by the time you're done. It will certainly be larger than two random examples.

Yes. You are correct. You completely missed the point of what this subthread is about, but yes. It's clear what "subject to the laws" means to normal people.

The thread was about someone misunderstanding what "subject to the jurisdiction" meant. Someone suggested that it meant subject to US laws including conscription and income tax, another person said "what if the law in question doesn't mandate conscription of foreigners" and then Telemakhos gave a pretty confusing answer to that. At some point you dropped in to make a further confusing and argumentative comment in response to that, so I tried to clear it up. If you were just disagreeing with Telemakhos, then I apologize for misunderstanding.

I hope that's an accurate summary?

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