Source: Los Angeles Times
by Erwin Chemerinsky
“This should have been an easy case for the Supreme Court. When the Constitution was penned in 1787, the founders followed English law and determined that everyone born in the country was deemed a citizen. This was followed until the Supreme Court’s tragic 1857 decision in Dred Scott vs. Sandford, which held that enslaved individuals were property of their owners and that they were not U.S. citizens, even if they had been born in the country. The first sentence of the first section of the 14th Amendment, adopted in 1868, was meant to expressly and unquestionably overrule this decision.” (06/30/26)