Balkinization  

Sunday, February 16, 2025

"Subject to the Jurisdiction" Means "Municipal Jurisdiction"

Gerard N. Magliocca

My birthright citizenship article from 2008 discusses the Senate Judiciary Committee's 1870 Report about the Fourteenth Amendment's effect on the Indian Tribes. The Committee was asked (among other things) whether the Fourteenth Amendment made tribal members citizens. Its report contains the first construction of the "subject to the jurisdiction" language in Section One.

The Judiciary Committee stated that "it is manifest that Congress has never regarded the Indian tribes as subject to the municipal jurisdiction of the United States." Moreover, "an act of Congress which should assume to treat the members of a tribe as subject to the municipal jurisdiction of the United States would be unconstitutional and void." Accordingly, the Committee concluded that "the Indians, in tribal condition, have never been subject to the jurisdiction of the United States in the sense in which the term jurisdiction is employed in the fourteenth amendment to the Constitution." 

Thus, the first construction of the relevant language (two years after ratification) said jurisdiction meant "municipal jurisdiction." What is municipal jurisdiction? The legal authority to regulate, which is also the ordinary meaning of jurisdiction. The alternative suggestion put forth by some scholars that "subject to the jurisdiction" means "allegiance" finds no support here. 

     


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