In birthright citizenship dissent, Justice Thomas stakes out an ideological claim of who counts as an American

In birthright citizenship dissent, Justice Thomas stakes out an ideological claim of who counts as an American

The Supreme Court’s decision about President Donald Trump’s attempt to narrow access to birthright citizenship left no doubt that a majority of justices agree it’s illegal. But two justices, Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch, revealed that they also viewed the challenges to Trump’s executive order as about more than the text of the 14th Amendment. They viewed it as an ideological battle about who is “American.”The court’s long-awaited decision in…

Subjects and Citizens: A Treatise by Justice Clarence Thomas

Conventional political philosophy has a blindspot over what turns out to be a crucial concept: the precise nature of the legal relationship between the human person and the regime under which he lives. In the US, we call this citizenship but how precisely is that different from the old-world notion of being a subject to a sovereign? Confusion over this issue led the majority in the Supreme Court decision in Trump vs. Barbara to overrule an execu…