{"id":5397,"date":"2026-09-25T10:56:56","date_gmt":"2026-09-25T14:56:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/jlpp\/?p=5397"},"modified":"2026-09-25T10:56:56","modified_gmt":"2026-09-25T14:56:56","slug":"what-went-wrong-in-trump-v-barbara-and-what-doors-remain-open-eric-wessan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/jlpp\/what-went-wrong-in-trump-v-barbara-and-what-doors-remain-open-eric-wessan\/","title":{"rendered":"What Went Wrong in Trump v. Barbara and What Doors Remain Open \u2013 Eric Wessan"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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\u00a0Experts promised that Trump v. Barbara<\/em> would be a rout against President Trump\u2019s Executive Order \u201cProtecting the Meaning and Value of American Citizenship.\u201d That order excluded from birthright citizenship children of tourists and illegal aliens. At best, the experts said, the President could lose only 7\u20132. Indeed, one of the first judges to confront President Trump\u2019s Executive Order derided it: \u201cThere are other times in world history where we look back and people of goodwill can say, \u2018Where were the judges? Where were the lawyers?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yet the placid surface of the Chief Justice\u2019s majority conceals shifting currents below. The effort to recover the Citizenship Clause\u2019s original meaning has opened a new frontier of immigration Originalism\u2014as to the Founding, the Fourteenth Amendment, and the statutes built on both. On a compressed timeline, Originalist scholarship convinced four Justices that the Constitution did not mean what many had assumed. Barbara <\/em>now poses the next questions. What is the original public meaning of the Citizenship Clause? What children fall within Wong Kim Ark<\/em>\u2019s exceptions? What room remains to legislate? A majority of Justices identify as Originalists, so it is fair to judge their work against an Originalist scorecard.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The majority\u2019s Originalist analysis fails at every step: text, history, and precedent. This Essay takes up that failure. Part I disaggregates the vote. Part II identifies four errors in the majority opinion. Part III maps the avenues that remain\u2014and assesses which are promising and which are harder than their proponents suppose.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Click here<\/a> to continue reading the full piece.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u00a0Experts promised that Trump v. Barbara would be a rout against President Trump\u2019s Executive Order \u201cProtecting the Meaning and Value of American Citizenship.\u201d That order excluded from birthright citizenship children of tourists and illegal aliens. At best, the experts said, the President could lose only 7\u20132. Indeed, one of the first judges to confront President Trump\u2019s Executive Order derided it: \u201cThere are other times in world history where we look back and people of goodwill […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":250,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_members_access_role":[],"_members_access_error":""},"categories":[72],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5397","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-per-curiam"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/peZSiL-1p3","jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/jlpp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5397","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/jlpp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/jlpp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/jlpp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/250"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/jlpp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5397"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/jlpp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5397\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5398,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/jlpp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5397\/revisions\/5398"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/jlpp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5397"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/jlpp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5397"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/jlpp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5397"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}