Birth­right cit­izen­ship lit­ig­a­tion in the shadow of World War II

De­vel­op­ment sum­mary

Pub­lished in the Michigan Journ­al of Race and Law, the art­icle ex­am­ines, with birth­right cit­izen­ship before the US Su­preme Court in Trump v. Bar­bara, the last time fed­er­al courts con­fron­ted an at­tempt to re­strict it: the 1942 suits Regan v. King and Fisk v. Wade, which sought to over­turn United States v. Wong Kim Ark (1898), the de­cision af­firm­ing the broad scope of birth­right cit­izen­ship under the Four­teenth Amend­ment.

Ac­cord­ing to the art­icle, al­though the cases left little doc­trin­al mark, they show how re­stric­tion­ist ar­gu­ments, past and present, rely on the im­mig­ra­tion and nat­ur­al­isa­tion stat­utes of their era; the 1942 lit­ig­a­tion sought to tie the Cit­izen­ship Clause to the racial ex­clu­sions then in force.