18 Republicans Cite 1600s Case Law to Defend Trump Birthright Citizenship Order

A group of House Republicans filed a brief Monday using case law from the 1600s to defend President Trump’s efforts to end birthright citizenship.

The big picture: The GOP lawmakers cited an English case from 150 years before the U.S. was founded to dictate the country’s present laws.

• “Calvin’s Case” was a 1608 British legal decision that held that children born in Scotland could be regarded as English subjects after Scotland’s James I ascended to the throne in both countries to become James VI.
• The decision was eventually adopted by U.S. courts and was central in shaping the country’s birthright citizenship law.

State of play: The brief from 18 of 25 Republican members of the House Judiciary Committee, which was filed in federal court in Washington state, comes in response to a lawsuit filed by four Democratic state attorneys general challenging Trump’s executive order.

{snip}

Zoom in: “Early English caselaw supports this concept of total allegiance and its role in citizenship, and even the Senators who drafted and debated the Jurisdiction Clause stated that children of ‘aliens’ or others ‘owing allegiance to anybody else’ would not receive citizenship,” the brief states.

{snip}

What they’re saying: “The touchstone for birthright citizenship under the Fourteenth Amendment is allegiance to the United States, rather than merely being subject to its laws or some subset thereof,” the brief concluded.

{snip}