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As has been noted in other responses to you: Dicta are just that, dicta. Moreover, the Reconstruction-era Slaughterhouse Cases arose in the context of the defe

As has been noted in other responses to you: Dicta are just that, dicta. Moreover, the Reconstruction-era Slaughterhouse Cases arose in the context of the defeated South's often-violent, century-long attempts to preserve "states' rights" (read: white supremacy). Limiting the reach of the 14th Amendment was one facet of that project; Louisiana's lawyer in the case was a prominent opponent of Reconstruction. The Court's 5-4 judgment has long since been shitcanned [0]; in the modern era it's palpably frivolous to cite its dicta as support. In any event: Longstanding actual practice has followed the conventional interpretation of "subject to the jurisdiction"; see, e.g., former British prime minister Boris Johnson, who was born in NYC to British citizens and thus had to pay U.S.-citizen taxes until he renounced his citizenship. [1] Finally, as has also been noted: No sane person would assert with a straight face that a suspected thief, murderer, or unsafe driver was immune from arrest and prosecution in the U.S., merely because s/he happened to be born in the U.S. to undocumented parents and therefore was supposedly not "subject to the jurisdiction." [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slaughter-House_Cases#Analysis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slaughter-House_Cases#Analysis [1] https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/feb/08/boris-johnson-renounces-us-citizenship-record-2016-uk-foreign-secretary https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/feb/08/boris-johns...

rayiner 2y ago
The Slaughterhouse Cases were decided just five years after the enactment of the 14th amendment, and the judgment is obviously correct and has never been overruled. And the dissent was obviously nuts in suggesting that the 14th amendment protected butchers from state economic regulation.
- dctoedt 2y ago
  I'll confess error in my wording above (and it's too late to edit it): The judgment (outcome) was arguably correct, as you say — state governments should indeed be able to do reasonable public-safety regulation. (Whether Louisiana's action in granting a private monopoly on meat processing was a reasonable way to promote public safety was another question: The Court's opinion focused on the 14th Amendment and federal privileges and immunities vs. those under state law.) The 5-4 majority's rationale went too far: As the opinion says, the Reconstruction Amendments (13 through 15) were intended to hem in state governments — notably but not exclusively those of the South, which by and large were dominated (often through murderous mob- and militia violence) by white, racist, recent- and still-aspiring enslavers — but the majority left the door too open to the possibility of states'-rights arguments. [0] [0] https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/83/36/ https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/83/36/
  - rayiner 2y ago
    Here’s an article addressing what the framers of the amendment meant: https://static.heritage.org/legal-and-judicial/birthright-citizenship/Law%20Review%20Final%20Print.pdf https://static.heritage.org/legal-and-judicial/birthright-ci... Haven’t had a chance to dig into it in detail, but it addresses evidence from the drafting process that isn’t addressed in Wong Kim Ark.
    - anigbrowl 2y ago
      It's just the same old bullshit in a new wrapper. Cherry-picked quotes from Congressional debates, a bunch of cases in between the passage of teh amendment and Wong Kim Ark, and then it launches into handwaving with arguments like The American Revolution was, by its inherent nature and through its express principles, an effective throwing off of the common law’s yoke of jus soli and its perpetual allegiance in favor of a consent-based compact theory of government. and a page later it's special pleading for Grotius, Emer Vattel, and compact theory. I gave up at that point. Perhaps there's some brilliant new theory buried in the last 1/3 of the article, but if you didn't think it worth reading in detail I'm not inclined to mine it for you! To be honest, the fact that it's from the Heritage foundation and published in a very conservative journal of law and politics give it a double flavor of polemic rather than scholarship. One can construct eloquent arguments for anything, from reinstating dred Scott to invalidating the Declaration of Independence and the subsequent formation of the USA - and indeed in this age of LLMs I expect legal polemics further proliferate. But when you get down to the actual substantive arguments, this paper strikes me as just another of the 'we wish things were different' type, wishing that the US had built its jurisprudential edifice on a continental rather than a common law substrate. Perhaps if the proponents of this idea invested their efforts in amending the Constitution (or going the Conventional route) they might have more success in building the required consensus.
      - rayiner 2y ago
        > To be honest, the fact that it's from the Heritage foundation and published in a very conservative journal of law and politics give it a double flavor of polemic rather than scholarship I’ll respond to your other point, but 90% of legal academia thinks “emanations from penumbras” is constitutional law. They’re wingnuts and kooks too. Nobody has the color of authority here. We gotta reconstruct the correct answer from first principles.

rayiner 2y ago

The Slaughterhouse Cases were decided just five years after the enactment of the 14th amendment, and the judgment is obviously correct and has never been overruled. And the dissent was obviously nuts in suggesting that the 14th amendment protected butchers from state economic regulation.

dctoedt 2y ago
I'll confess error in my wording above (and it's too late to edit it): The judgment (outcome) was arguably correct, as you say — state governments should indeed be able to do reasonable public-safety regulation. (Whether Louisiana's action in granting a private monopoly on meat processing was a reasonable way to promote public safety was another question: The Court's opinion focused on the 14th Amendment and federal privileges and immunities vs. those under state law.) The 5-4 majority's rationale went too far: As the opinion says, the Reconstruction Amendments (13 through 15) were intended to hem in state governments — notably but not exclusively those of the South, which by and large were dominated (often through murderous mob- and militia violence) by white, racist, recent- and still-aspiring enslavers — but the majority left the door too open to the possibility of states'-rights arguments. [0] [0] https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/83/36/ https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/83/36/
- rayiner 2y ago
  Here’s an article addressing what the framers of the amendment meant: https://static.heritage.org/legal-and-judicial/birthright-citizenship/Law%20Review%20Final%20Print.pdf https://static.heritage.org/legal-and-judicial/birthright-ci... Haven’t had a chance to dig into it in detail, but it addresses evidence from the drafting process that isn’t addressed in Wong Kim Ark.
  - anigbrowl 2y ago
    It's just the same old bullshit in a new wrapper. Cherry-picked quotes from Congressional debates, a bunch of cases in between the passage of teh amendment and Wong Kim Ark, and then it launches into handwaving with arguments like The American Revolution was, by its inherent nature and through its express principles, an effective throwing off of the common law’s yoke of jus soli and its perpetual allegiance in favor of a consent-based compact theory of government. and a page later it's special pleading for Grotius, Emer Vattel, and compact theory. I gave up at that point. Perhaps there's some brilliant new theory buried in the last 1/3 of the article, but if you didn't think it worth reading in detail I'm not inclined to mine it for you! To be honest, the fact that it's from the Heritage foundation and published in a very conservative journal of law and politics give it a double flavor of polemic rather than scholarship. One can construct eloquent arguments for anything, from reinstating dred Scott to invalidating the Declaration of Independence and the subsequent formation of the USA - and indeed in this age of LLMs I expect legal polemics further proliferate. But when you get down to the actual substantive arguments, this paper strikes me as just another of the 'we wish things were different' type, wishing that the US had built its jurisprudential edifice on a continental rather than a common law substrate. Perhaps if the proponents of this idea invested their efforts in amending the Constitution (or going the Conventional route) they might have more success in building the required consensus.
    - rayiner 2y ago
      > To be honest, the fact that it's from the Heritage foundation and published in a very conservative journal of law and politics give it a double flavor of polemic rather than scholarship I’ll respond to your other point, but 90% of legal academia thinks “emanations from penumbras” is constitutional law. They’re wingnuts and kooks too. Nobody has the color of authority here. We gotta reconstruct the correct answer from first principles.