No. of Recommendations: 2
Thinks. I used my own chat with Gemini to get some more details:
The specific, pivotal passage that the dissent and the government tried to use—and that Chief Justice Roberts ultimately turned back against them—reads:
"The country and the rebel government have each laid claim to the public service of the slave, and yet but one of the two can have a rightful claim to such service. That rightful claim belongs to the United States, because every one born on their soil, with the few exceptions of the children of travellers and transient residents, owes them a primary allegiance. Every one so born has been counted among those represented in Congress; every slave has ever been represented in Congress..."
The Dissent's Argument: The Trump administration and the dissenting justices seized upon the phrase "owes them a primary allegiance." They argued that Bancroft was defining citizenship as something requiring a "primary," subjective, or formal political allegiance. They claimed this proved that the Reconstruction-era framers intended to exclude the children of undocumented immigrants or temporary foreign workers from birthright citizenship, as their parents' primary allegiance lay elsewhere.
Roberts's Rejoinder: Chief Justice Roberts pointed out that the dissent completely flipped Bancroft's point upside down. Bancroft wasn't trying to restrict citizenship; he was using the traditional common law rule of the soil (jus soli) to expand it. He explicitly carved out only the classic common law exceptions (the children of foreign diplomats/travelers).
This is still a bit opaque to me, but I guess that was Robert's point.
