Balkinization  

Thursday, October 16, 2025

New Draft Essay on Birthright Citizenship

Gerard N. Magliocca

This will be part of an issue of the Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy starring articles by Ilan Wurman and Keith Whittington. My essay is the (much shorter) third wheel, but here's the Abstract:

This Essay argues that the invocations of the gypsies (or Roma) during the debates on the Civil Rights Act of 1866 and the Citizenship Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment drew on Blackstone's discussion of them in his Commentaries and means that legal immigration status, domicile, and allegiance are not requirements for birth citizenship in the United States. The Roma were barred from entering Britain for centuries, but their native-born children were still considered subjects of the Crown. In 1866, Senator Edgar Cowan argued in Congress that birth citizenship should not apply to gypsies because, among other things, they "have no homes" and "no allegiance." He lost, even though they did paradigmatically lack homes or allegiance to any government. The Roma precedents from common law and from the original public meaning cut sharply against the legality of any effort to restrict birth citizenship. 



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