Source: The Dispatch
by Keith E Whittington
“There is a great deal of legal significance to whether the child of an alien to the United States born in California thereby becomes a citizen of this nation. The longstanding understanding is that such a child benefits from birthright citizenship, that such a child is a natural-born American citizen by virtue of having been born within the United States. That would have been true under the English common law prior to the American Revolution. It was the dominant understanding of American common law after the Revolution. It was the established meaning of the text of the 14th Amendment adopted after the Civil War.” (03/02/26)