We the People: 14th Amendment defined citizenship

Each week, The Spokesman Review examines a question from the naturalization test that immigrants must pass to become US citizens.

Today’s question, what change gives citizenship to everyone born in the United States?

The change that gives citizenship to everyone born in the United States is the 14th change. Section 1, Clause 1 of this amendment, adopted in 1868, guarantees that “all persons born or naturalized in the United States in whose jurisdiction are subject to are citizens of the United States and of the state in which they are resident”.

With the exception of children of foreign diplomats who are subject to US jurisdiction, this means that anyone born or naturalized within the borders of the United States, or born abroad by American citizens, is a citizen of the country. While the citizenship clause of this amendment appears simple, there are important details regarding the background to this clause, the rights attached to nationality and the extension of those rights attached to nationality that need further examination.

The citizenship clause is a codification of the principle of the birthright of citizenship. For the United States, the birthright of citizenship was not conceived in a vacuum, but – like several parts of the US constitutional framework – was inherited by the British government. Prior to 1776, all persons born in the British Empire were considered British citizens, including those in the Empire’s North American colonies that would later become the first 13 American states.

Indeed, a common assumption among late-18th-century American government luminaries was

When some American colonists began to see major gaps between their rights as British citizens and those in other regions of the empire, such as the “no taxation without representation” question, they first thought about it and later decided to move away from Britain separate the First and Second Continental Congresses in 1774 and 1775.

When the United States became independent on July 4, 1776, the Declaration of Independence stated in part that “all human beings are created equal, given by their Creator certain inalienable rights, including life, freedom, and pursuit.” of happiness. “

Although the United States kept the practice of birthright citizenship away from Great Britain, the designers of the American government thought that the rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness in the United States would be more securely and evenly guaranteed if combined with American citizenship .

Although the word “citizen” appears in the original US Constitution and Bill of Rights (ratified in 1788 and 1791), there was no precise definition of American citizenship by the late 18th century.

According to Martha Jones in her Birthright Citizens: A History of Race and Rights in Antebellum America, citizenship prior to 1868 was both imprecisely defined and based on race:

The only references in the constitution to citizens were fragmentary and implicit: only citizens could serve as members of Congress; only “naturally born” citizens as president; only citizens could sue in federal courts. The constitution thus guaranteed privileges and immunity for citizens, but did not specify how citizens should be distinguished from non-citizens. Additionally, the issue of race and citizenship, both state and state, remained unresolved.

Privileges and immunities refer to rights associated with US citizenship. Prior to the American Civil War, these included rights such as the right to work, the freedom to exercise your religious beliefs, the right to a jury trial, travel within and between states, and more.

However, during this period in US history, federal civil liberties (a civil liberty is an individual right protected against government intrusion) governed the US Constitution and the Bill of Rights (the first ten amendments) only for the acts and laws of the federal government, not those of the state governments.

This meant that citizenship was associated with different rights compared to federal citizenship. Up until the beginning of the 19th century, for example, there was still a government-recognized religion in several states, which is now viewed as a violation of religious rights. Before 1868, however, states had a wide margin of discretion in deciding whether the rights and freedoms associated with federal citizenship should be recognized.

That changed with the American Civil War. The war created the political window that made the adoption of the 13th (prohibition of slavery, adopted 1865), 14th and 15th amendments (right to vote regardless of race, adopted 1870) more likely.

The racist debates over slavery and citizenship from 1776 until the eve of the war also made the passage of these changes necessary – according to former Supreme Court Justices William Brennen and Thurgood Marshall – to improve the US Constitution.

Although the contours of American citizenship were not clearly defined prior to 1868, federal laws such as the Naturalization Act of 1790 and the Missouri Compromise of 1820, as well as Supreme Court rulings such as Dred Scott v. Sandford from 1857 granted federal citizenship and related rights largely to a non-Hispanic White and excluded African American, Native American and other racial minorities.

The consequences of this were dire. For example, if a free African American was captured by a slave catcher in pre-war America, they could claim that the free African American was a slave and therefore subject to fugitive slave laws. However, free African Americans would not have the opportunity to challenge the allegation in court because they lacked federal citizenship and the associated criminal justice rights.

In terms of citizenship, Amendment 14th was adopted most directly to protect African American rights, but the implications extend to anyone born or naturalized in the United States, and immunities of federal citizenship must be recognized by state governments.

While today most of the federal constitutional rights are considered part of federal citizenship available to all Americans regardless of where they live, the American government – through a process known as incorporation – must still have several state rights (such as Parts of the Fifth and Sixth Amendments) that are fully applicable to state governments. Although the Fourteenth Amendment defined federal citizenship in the United States, the contours of state citizenship are still being shaped today.

Michael Ritter is Assistant Professor of Political Science at Washington State University at Pullman. This article is part of a Spokesman Review partnership with the Foley Institute of Public Policy and Public Service at Washington State University.