SCOTUS AND SNATCH SQUADS: IS THIS THE END OF THE 14TH AMENDMENT?

On Friday June 27th the Supreme Court handed down a decision in a case called Trump v CASA which depending on how you read it essentially gutted the 14th Amendment to the Constitution which opens: “ 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”

The 14th Amendment was adopted in July 1868 and addressed the status of freed slaves in the South by guaranteeing these African-Americans full citizenship rights. As waves of migration swelled in the ensuing 150 years, the 14th Amendment guaranteed that my father, born in America to a mother who was not, would have full rights of citizenship.

A law suit had been brought by several groups following a Trump executive order outlining circumstances where people born in the US were not entitled to the basic rights of citizens by birthright. This executive order or ukase as they used to call it in Tsarist Russia has paved the way for the arrests of many, mostly Hispanic immigrants and their subsequent deportation.

The Supreme Court decision was 6-3 in Trump’s favour with the Republican appointed judges all lining up behind extending even more executive power to the President.

This podcast is a conversation — really a private tutorial — with Damon Silvers, for many years director of policy and special counsel to the AFL-CIO and currently a visiting professor of practice at University College London.