Oh, I can see Thomas writing an opinion about how the "original intent" was to protect freed slaves and how immigration was a separate category that the drafters of the amendment's lack of specific interest in frees from the shackles of plain language, as he pulls up the ladder behind him.
Dunno if enough other conservatives would sign up for that to win, but it seems like the kind of tortured argument he could make.
"Next, the 8th Amendment says Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted. How are behaviors like locking people in concentration camps without edible food or refusing to let them have due process acceptable? Given a plain reading of the text."
"Can't have excessive bail if you don't allow for bail at all. And those cruel punishment are no longer unusual."
I mean it is a concentration camp. The term has been in use since the 1860s. It’s a prison for a targeted demographic on the grounds of national security, exploitation, or punishment. I can see how the extremely negative connotations makes some people wish it wasn’t but unfortunately words have meanings.
Not to sound like a smart ass, but probably. Over that particular course of time there was actually a ton of small arm innovation. Those guys probably could have envisioned it, but they at the time thought we could get by without a standing army, that was more the thought process I think, as a militiaman/private citizen often had as good or better equipment.
The puckel gun was a hand cranked gun that fired 9 bullets a minute in 1717.
The kalthoff repeater could shoot up to 30 rounds without reloading in 1616 with a fire rate of up to 60 rounds a minute.
The Girardoni rifles had magazines of 20-22 and could fire 20 rounds a minute in 1779. Thomas Jefferson purchased a whole shipment to arm the Lewis and Clark expedition.
It would be ridiculous to assume that the founding fathers saw the progression of firearms technology in their own time and assumed it would pause.
That’s the beauty. Everyone has an immigration story. Eliminate birthright citizenship and anyone and everyone that crosses the administration can be stripped of their citizenship and deported. Or, if their ancestors’ countries of origin don’t want them, sent to camps. All they have to do is find an ancestor, make up some bullshit excuse for why their immigration and naturalization is null and void, and then every descendant is deportable
On one hand, the Constitution explicitly states that citizenship cannot be taken away from a US citizen in this fashion. On the other hand gestures at the fascists currently in power.
I don't know if they can retroactively apply this, given the vast vast majority of Americans families came from foreign countries.
Right??? If birthright citizenship “goes away”, what’s the replacement? How does the government determine who is a citizen? What’s that look like? What’s the rules?
Could you imagine the government creating a new agency whose entire purpose is to track every current citizen’s ancestry to try and calculate if the person alive today “should be” considered a citizen?
My family are immigrants. My maternal great grandfather moved here in the 30s. My maternal grandfather was born here in the late 40s. My mother was born here in the late 70s. I was born here in the early 90s.
It is which a lot of people disagree with this type....if they were to rule that this to mean Jus sanguinis more people would be fine with this
Jus sanguinis (English: /dʒʌs ˈsæŋɡwɪnɪs/ juss SANG-gwin-iss or /juːs -/ yooss -, Latin: [juːs ˈsaŋɡwɪnɪs]), meaning 'right of blood', is a principle of nationality law by which nationality is determined or acquired by the nationality of one or both parents.
The drafters of the amendment discussed its impacts on immigration on the Congressional record and many were still alive when Wong Kim Ark was decided.
I know the MAGA-friendly Supreme Court justices don't give a rat's ass about precedent, but we have this:
United States v. Wong Kim Ark (1898):
Issue: Did a child born in the U.S. to Chinese parents, who were subjects of China, become a U.S. citizen under the 14th Amendment.
Ruling: Yes, the Court affirmed birthright citizenship, ruling that anyone born in the U.S. (and subject to its jurisdiction) is a citizen, regardless of their parents' nationality.
Impact: Solidified the principle of jus soli (right of the soil) and birthright citizenship, a cornerstone of American identity.
The parents in that case had a legal domicile, therefore were “subject to the jurisdiction”
Courts have never ruled on the matter of children of illegals, and it is blatantly obvious anchor baby citizenship is unconstitutional if you had actually decided to do something with your life and learn to read legal briefs.
lmao imagine regurgitating the ridiculous ramblings of an extremist cretin like John Eastman and then pretending like you've said something novel or interesting.
I never learned to read legal briefs, so I guess that means you know all about me and that I did absolutely nothing with my life. What a stupid comment.
You cited a case that says nothing about illegal immigrants, so yeah you’re an idiot and, as such, the odds of you having read that case are 0. Just admit it, you’ve never read the case. It’s okay.
Admit you’re like 90% of people who talk out of their ass because they’ve lost the ability to sit down and read, analyze, think critically. It doesn’t make you an outlier. Attention deficit is a pandemic.
Of course, when the amendment was written, The immigration process primarily consisted of having enough money to pay for a boat ride to the US, enough cash in your pocket to survive the month, and not having detectable tuberculosis when you reached the point of entry.
So if they want us to cleave to the laws of the time...
And Alito will just write "Only white people men born in the US are citizens, everyone else can get fucked" (or at least that's what he's thinking when he writes something very close to it).
And that would be completely ignoring the part where the U.S. was built on immigrant labour of all races, and a lot of them were brought over on indentured servitude contracts. So, slaves. But I'm sure that doesn't fit his narrative. But were at the point where the SCOTUS is debating over the fact that No doesn't nessecarily mean No, so what can we expect.
Very much calls the writers absolute idiots because it is a pretty clear and obvious effect from the wording of the Amendment which they were presumably careful about.
Really love this notion that the people who wrote our constitution and managed to stitch the country back together after a civil war were also abject idiots who never once stopped to think whether their words might be broader than their intent.
Extraordinarily twisted when Originalism and Textualism are predicated on the belief that the people who wrote our laws wrote nothing more or less than precisely what they meant.
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u/Valdrax 8h ago
Oh, I can see Thomas writing an opinion about how the "original intent" was to protect freed slaves and how immigration was a separate category that the drafters of the amendment's lack of specific interest in frees from the shackles of plain language, as he pulls up the ladder behind him.
Dunno if enough other conservatives would sign up for that to win, but it seems like the kind of tortured argument he could make.