I’m amused to see people dragging out the 14th Amendment in response to President Trump’s suggestion that he’ll unilaterally end ‘birthright citizenship’ through executive action.
For example, a recent piece in Reason ends this way: ‘The original meaning of the 14th Amendment has been clear since 1866. If Trump proceeds with his unconstitutional executive order attacking birthright citizenship, he deserves to be laughed out of court.’
What the author fails to realize is that the words of the 14th Amendment aren’t any more meaningful, to the Supreme Court, than the words of the 1st Amendment, or the 2nd Amendment, or the 4th Amendment, or any of the other words in the Constitution.
Do we have laws, passed by Congress, abridging freedom of speech? Yes. Do we have laws infringing the right to keep and bear arms? Yes. Do we have laws allowing government agents to search people without probable cause? Yes. Do the words of the Constitution allow any of those? No. Has the Court unilaterally amended the Constitution to allow all of them? Yup.