Tag: Legislative branch

In Section 1 of its 14th Amendment, the U.S. Constitution reads in pertinent part: “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.” Proposed by Congress in 1866 — and deemed by a procedurally-rare subsequent vote of Congress to have been validly ratified by the sufficient number of state legislatures in 1868 — the 14th Amendment is among the Constitution’s lengthiest and it touches upon a number of different topics each of which could stand alone. Authorship of the above-quoted words has been attributed to United States Senator Jacob Howard of Michigan. This particular provision of the 14th Amendment is generally acknowledged to overturn the decision of the U.S. Supreme Court in the now-infamous 1857 case of Dred Scott v. Sandford in which it had been determined that African-Americans born in the United States — to parents likewise born within the United States — could not be deemed to be American citizens. Often overlooked by persons professing to be in-the-know about the 14th Amendment, and what it does — or does not — convey about birth citizenship are the key words…