re: Executive Order expected to end birthright citizenship for illegal immigrants

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Not a single person in Congress, nor any of the state legislature that ratified it, would have (or historically could have) intended it to apply to abortion.

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Illegal aliens who did not enter America legally are also not under American legal jurisdiction

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So you are okay with infringing amendments for political purposes? I don't think you are making the point you think you are making.

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The children of foreign diplomats do not get birthright citizenship because they are not under American jurisdiction. Illegal aliens who did not enter America legally are also not under American legal jurisdiction.

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The only wiggle room that Wong Kim Ark gives is if you were to consider the illegal aliens in this country to be "enemy forces engaged in hostile occupation of the country's territory," which is an extremely difficult position to sell with a straight face.

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One of the defining results of WKA wasn't the immigration question. It was the idea that the constitution, in its entirety, including amendments, should be read through the lens of Common Law.

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Originalism teaches only that the Constitution’s original meaning is fixed; meanwhile, of course, new applications of that meaning will arise with new developments and new technologies. Consider a few examples. As originally understood, the term “cruel” in the Eighth Amendment’s Cruel and Unusual Punishments Clause referred (at least) to methods of execution deliberately designed to inflict pain. That never changes. But that meaning doesn’t just encompass those particular forms of torture known at the founding. It also applies to deliberate efforts to inflict a slow and painful death by laser. Take another example. As originally understood, the First Amendment protected speech. That guarantee doesn’t just apply to speech on street corners or in newspapers; it applies equally to speech on the Internet. Or consider the Fourth Amendment. As originally understood, it usually required the government to get a warrant to search a home. And that meaning applies equally whether the government seeks to conduct a search the old-fashioned way by rummaging through the place or in a more modern way by using a thermal imaging device to see inside. Whether it’s the Constitution’s prohibition on torture, its protection of speech, or its restrictions on searches, the meaning remains constant even as new applications arise.

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Living constitutionalists often complain we can’t know the original understanding because the document’s too old and cryptic. Hardly. We figure out the original meaning of old and difficult texts all the time. Just ask any English professor who teaches Shakespeare or Beowulf.

I suspect the real complaint of living constitutionalists isn’t with old laws generally so much as it is with the particular terms of this old law. The Constitution is short—only about 7,500 words, including all its amendments. It doesn’t dictate much about the burning social and political questions they care about. Instead, it leaves the resolution of those matters to elections and votes and the amendment process. And it seems this is the real problem for the critics. For when it comes to the social and political questions of the day they care most about, many living constitutionalists would prefer to have philosopher-king judges swoop down from their marble palace to ordain answers rather than allow the people and their representatives to discuss, debate, and resolve them. You could even say the real complaint here is with our democracy.

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Can this be interpreted in such a way as to say that mom must be in the U.S. legally at the time of the child's birth?

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Hard to imagine that the writers of the 14th envisioning intended to extend constitutional protections to non-citizens in the country illegally.

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They're big fans of originalist, textualist, and historical analysis.

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