A Stitch in Haste

Richard Posner has a snarky response to those who argue that the Fourteenth Amendment means what it says and says what it means:

It is true that section 1 of the Fourteenth Amendment provides that “all persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.” But the purpose of this provision, adopted in 1868, was merely to grant citizenship to the recently freed slaves, and the accepted exception for children of foreign diplomats and heads of state (such children, though born in the United States, do not receive U.S. citizenship), shows that the citizenship clause need not be read literally.

So, if you’re Judge Posner, all you have to do to achieve your desired outcome in the denial-of-citizenship debate is assume that “born” doesn’t mean “born” and that “jurisdiction” doesn’t mean “jurisdiction.”

Wasn’t that easy?

I suppose next we might argue that “public use” doesn’t mean … oh, wait, never mind.

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• Becker-Posner on Gay Marriage
• On Posner’s “Data-Mining Exception” to the Fourth Amendment

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