Allen Guelzo examines the history behind one of today’s hottest political debates.
What makes someone a citizen? We might say, a little hopefully, that a citizen is someone who obeys the law, treats other citizens with respect, participates in governance, and enjoys the protection of the United States. But those are definitions of good citizenship. What makes one a citizen as a legal fact was elided when the Constitution was written in 1787. It was not until the ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment in 1868 that the Constitution defined who was a citizen. It did so in one terse sentence: “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.” If you are born in the U.S., you are considered, ipso facto, an American citizen, and with only minor exceptions.
That sentence has, of course, triggered a major constitutional brawl. …
… There are, in the most general sense, two ways of making someone a citizen. The first is known as the jus sanguinis—the law of blood, or hereditary descent. Under jus sanguinis, you are automatically a citizen if your parents were citizens. The alternative is the jus solis—the law of the soil, where birth on a national territory makes you a citizen. It was this version of citizenship that the Fourteenth Amendment made part of the Constitution.
In the long view, the jus solis has been the dominant model for citizenship in English, and then American, law. As early as 1608, the fabled English jurist Edward Coke wrote in Calvin’s Case that “every one born within the dominions of the King of England” is “entitled to enjoy all the rights and liberties of an Englishman.” And though the Constitution never spelled out the jus soli, American jurists and judges picked up the theme in American practice.
