‘Irrelevant?’ Justice Alito Grills ACLU Lawyer Over Key Precedent in Citizenship Case

Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito grilled ACLU lawyer Cecillia Wang on Wednesday during a hearing on birthright citizenship.

During the hearing, Wang argued:

Ask any American what our citizenship rule is and they’ll tell you, everyone born here is a citizen alike. That rule was enshrined in the 14th Amendment to put it out of reach of any government official to destroy. When the government tried to strip Mr. Wong Kim Ark’s citizenship on largely the same grounds they raised today, this court said no. 30 years after ratification, this court held that the 14th Amendment embodies the English Common Law rule. Virtually everybody born on U.S. soil is subject to its jurisdiction and is a citizen. It excludes only those cloaked with a fiction of extraterritoriality because they are subject to another sovereign’s jurisdiction even when they are in the United States. A closed set of exceptions to an otherwise universal rule.

My friend has now clearly said that the government is not asking you to overrule Wong Kim Ark. That is a fatal concession because Wong Kim Ark‘s controlling rule of decision precludes their parental domicile requirement. The dissent understood that and the majority tells us six times in the opinion that domicile is irrelevant under Common Law.

Alito responded by asking, “Why put ‘domicile’ in? Sometimes it’s hard to figure out what is the holding of the case, here he tells us this is the holding of the case. Why put ‘domicile’ in there? It’s just something– it’s something irrelevant that he wanted to throw in?”

“It’s like, you know, whether a child born in the United States or of parents of Chinese descent who once resided at a particular address in San Francisco, who attempted to enter the country at the port of San Francisco. Why put it in if it’s irrelevant?” continued Alito.

Watch above via CNN.

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