The stifling intolerance and lack of intellectual diversity are a crushing reality in higher education today. There are few remaining conservatives or libertarians on law school faculties, which have been purged of dissenting voices through a biased hiring and promotion system. Despite years of complaints and declining public trust in higher education, faculty members continue to reinforce bias and orthodoxy in our schools. There is no better example than Fordham University School of Law professor John Pfaff, who recently called for “repercussions” for professors who do not “recant” their view that birthright citizenship is not protected by the 14th Amendment.
In Trump v. Barbara, the Supreme Court held that the 14th Amendment protects birthright citizenship, a view rejected by four justices, including Justice Brett Kavanaugh, who would have struck down the underlying executive order on other grounds.
This has long been a debate that divided legal experts. Given the purging of our law schools of conservative scholars, the rejection of birthright citizenship is not a popular view in higher education. However, some of us stressed when the decision came down that there were good-faith arguments on both sides and defended conservative justices like Justice Amy Coney Barrett for voting with the liberal justices in rejecting the claim.
That tolerance, however, is intolerable for professors like Pfaff. After the decision, Professor Pfaff went on BlueSky to vent against anyone who dared to voice a dissenting view in academia, calling such faculty “parasites” that have to be effectively stomped out of higher education. In his post, Pfaff declared:
“There MUST be repercussions for the lawprofs who advanced such untenable arguments. Their behavior is — and I mean this literally, not dehumanizingly — parasitic.
They exploit norms of collegiality and presumptions of integrity to advance trash. Which undermines the work of ALL of us.”
His rationale for punishing opposing viewpoints is an insight into the arguments used against intellectual diversity and institutional neutrality in higher education.
I recently returned from a debate with the President of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) who opposed institutional neutrality principles. I also previously debated Professor Randall Kennedy at Harvard Law School on the lack of intellectual diversity at Harvard.
I had a dinner with another Harvard Law Professor who expressed disbelief that I expected him to vote for any faculty applicants who held views that he considered wrong. When I noted that I regularly vote for faculty candidates who hold opposing views, he just shrugged and said that, if he rejects their views, he cannot vote for those views to be taught to students.
Many faculty members have rejected free speech and intellectual diversity arguments to restore greater balance in our universities. In my book, “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage,” I discuss these arguments to justify the current levels of intolerance and orthodoxy in higher education.
We previously discussed how two Arizona State University professors — Richard Amesbury and Catherine O’Donnell — wrote that free speech concerns yield too much to the “right wing” and that free speech should not be given the protection currently afforded by universities and colleges. Indeed, they argue that free speech may be harming higher education by fostering “unworthy” ideas.
Amesbury teaches religious studies and O’Donnell teaches history at ASU. They wrote an article titled “Dear Administrators: Enough with the Free Speech Rhetoric! It Concedes Too Much to the Right-Wing Agenda.”
Their view of “unworthy ideas” is used by many to justify the overwhelmingly liberal makeup of our faculties and is reflected in Pfaff’s claim that such opposing views, even from a tiny minority of professors, undermined the work of all professors.
Some sites, such as Above the Law, have supported the exclusion of conservative faculty. Senior Editor Joe Patrice defended “predominantly liberal faculties” by arguing that hiring a conservative law professor is akin to allowing a believer in geocentrism to teach at a university.
Pfaff expressly lashed out at Professor Ilan Wurman (whose scholarship was cited by Justice Thomas in his dissent) as an example of the type of professor who needs to be punished for expressing opposing viewpoints:
“If there are no costs to that — and only the upside to fancy dinners funded by antidemocratic oligarchs and the ‘nonpartisan institutions’ they have endowed — then we can only reward this behavior. Everyone involved in this canard should be frozen out of academic life until they recant.
Academics cannot simultaneously complain about the inability for facts and reality to drive policy while simultaneously refusing to confront the fabulists in our midst. Wurman et al do not just demean originalism or history. They demean ALL of us, by making ALL of us less credible.”
Professor Wurman responded, “Ah yes, time to push for that traditional tool of academic thought and freedom—the recantation!”
Pfaff was responding to an unhinged posting from Georgia State University Professor Anthony Michael Kreis, who has also shown some of the same intolerance for opposing views in academia. (Notably, Kreis was made an Associate Dean for Faculty Research & Development by his school). While not calling for compelled recantation, he also denounced those who disagree with his views. In his BlueSky posting, Kreis wrote:
“I’m mad about today. I’m mad that justices can’t do the bare minimum to uphold the Constitution. I’m mad that the law and our history, which I have dedicated so much of my life to, is an inconvenience than an inheritance to many. I’m mad that the academy, which I love, rewards and enables it.” (emphasis added).
I will remind you that the Court ruled in favor of birthright citizenship, but Kreis appears upset that there are dissenting views on the Court and there are academics who “enable” such dissenting views. Kreis also has denounced Professor Randy Barnett (a leading constitutional scholar who wrote an opinion piece with Wurman) as engaging in shameful “hackery” that is “not scholarly.”
These are the voices of a perpetually angry and intellectually intolerant of academia.
The views and anger of Pfaff and Kries are clearly shared by many in higher education, though I would like to think that most academics still recoil from this type of raw intolerance.
Indeed, after backlash over his comments, Pfaff made a half-hearted effort to address the critics but seemed to make it worse after acknowledging that perhaps he was “too blunt”:
“I stand by the idea, but I should have phrased it better. Academic freedom is the right to say what you want, without INSTITUTIONAL repercussions (generally). But it’s not the right to speak w NO repercussions.”
He then appeared to take an implied swipe again at Wurman for having been cited by the justices:
“Ideally, bad work is self-sanctioning: it gets ignored,” he continued. “That, though, is not what happened here. An idea [with] no prior historical support gained enough traction after an aggressive post-EO campaign to nearly sway a SCOTUS majority. That sets a dangerous precedent.”
So academic freedom is nice, but there still have to be repercussions, and those voicing dissenting views are setting “a dangerous precedent.”
These exchanges give outsiders a chilling insight into the rationalization of many in higher education to maintain orthodoxy. Many others would not voice such views openly, but their hiring records demonstrate a similar intolerance of opposing views.
Apologies in advance to Stealers Wheel & Reservoir Dogs: I often hum this refrain around my fellow academics & scioentsits who for all their education and intellect are pretty darn stupid most times. “Clowns to the left of me, Jokers to the right, here I am stuck in the middle with you”. It’s allso appropos of the reason the band wrote the song. Endless series of meaningless interactions during gatherings that could actually yield some results. Since I am not ideoloically hide-bound, my brain is free to exercise it’s full sarcastic and sardonic nature in these moments and it’s carefree behavior is further compounded by the fact that I am physically too large to be manhandled and too fast a thinker for them to embarass. I also find that my Zen master’s teachings of using direct pointing at a problem very effective in dealing with both clowns and jokers in social gatherings.
All this discussion of recantations on campus bring me round to the Python skit on how to determine if the head of HR is a witch. Fo course he is, but if only he would float!
@anon: As you wished – a complete prophetic sketch about the “no kings” movement including guest representation of George Soros and Neville Singham about the satirically identified American Federation of Teachers (AFT) and Service Employees International Union (SEIU) as the British Dental Association.
Censorship isn’t the answer, but calling out trash scholarship is totally fair game.
Take Ilan Wurman’s “allegiance-for-protection” theory. As Ilya Somin points out, it has a massive, embarrassing flaw: it completely breaks down when you look at freed slaves. Enslaved people weren’t getting government protection in exchange for voluntary allegiance—they were enslaved. In the Lockean tradition, you can’t have a social contract under duress. Under Wurman’s rigid logic, millions of freed slaves wouldn’t qualify for citizenship. That completely ruins the entire point of the 14th Amendment (according to Wurman).
Some papers just don’t deserve a seat at the table, but legal academia has zero real gatekeeping. Unlike history journals that use brutal peer review by actual experts, law reviews are run by 24-year-old students. They can check if a quote exists, but they can’t tell when an author is completely cherry-picking the past. This creates a massive loophole for “Law Office History.” An originalist can bypass real historians, get published by law students, and watch the Supreme Court copy-paste historical fiction into binding constitutional law while actual historians watch in horror.
Professor, it seems that by tolerating and even encouraging debate at the university, actively engaging in debate, writing essays w/o sprinkling words with all capital letters, you are a vanishing breed. I hope that a new generation will be inspired by your stout defense of all aspects of the freedom of speech. This applies not just to law but all types of intellectual inquiry. Albert Einstein, who knew a thing or two about real dictators and how essential free speech is to progress wrote, “A dictatorship means muzzles all round and consequently stultification. Science can flourish only in an atmosphere of free speech.”
As I interpret passages in scripture by the whole cloth of the Bible, I would think that a law professor would interpret law and policy by the whole cloth of the Constitution, not by his own personal bias. How can you be a law professor if you don’t honor the clear word of the first amendment?
If anyone should be forced to “recant,” it’s Pfaff for this doozy:
“An idea [with] no prior historical support gained enough traction after an aggressive post-EO campaign to nearly sway a SCOTUS majority. That sets a dangerous precedent.”
Jacob M. Howard, the man who wrote the citizenship clause in the 14A:
“This will not, of course, include persons born in the United States who are foreigners, aliens, who belong to the families of ambassadors or foreign ministers…”
No historical support, indeed.
Pfaff is a hack.
Mainstream legal scholars argue that the commas function as modifiers, meaning Howard was specifically describing “foreigners and aliens who belong to the families of ambassadors”
Other senators specifically asked if the clause would apply to children of English or German immigrants. The framers confirmed it would, because those immigrants are bound to obey U.S. laws.
“Mr. Cowan, of Pennsylvania, asked, “Whether it will not have the effect of naturalizing the children of Chinese and Gypsies born in this country?” Mr. Trumbull answered, “Undoubtedly,” and asked, “is not the child born in this country of German parents a citizen?” Mr. Cowan replied, “The children of German parents are citizens; but Germans are not Chinese.” Mr. Trumbull rejoined: “The law makes no such distinction, and the child of an Asiatic is just as much a citizen as the child of a European.””
Your post is EXACTLY the type of cherry-picking of historical references that makes Wurman’s scholarship so problematic.
Trumbull also said in his letter to Johnson with respect to the same concept in the Civil Rights Act that children of temporary visitors would not be citizens. Children of parents domiciled here, who are subject to the “complete” jurisdiction of the US, would be citizens by birth under the 14th amendment, regardless of race. That is the conclusion reached by Wurman and Thomas, and they make their cases persuasively.
Diversity to the left is everyone thinking the same but wearing different clothes.
Tolerance to the left is killing anyone with a different political opinion.
Democratic motto: Uniformity and Stupidity is our strength.
Suck it, Nostradamus. It was a Democratic administration that saved us from all of that kind of stuff.
If Turley can be biased, then why can’t others be?
Why the double-standard about who can and cannot be biased?
Another silly question. Others can be biased. Professor Turley never denies that. He points out that bias.
Also, this is a “tu quoque” fallacy. If a smoker warns me about the dangers of smoking, would it make any sense to say: those dangers don’t exist because you are a smoker. It’s nonsensical. What the smoker says should be evaluated based on its substance, not based on whether the smoker is also doing the thing he is warning against.
Tu quoque,[a] literally “you, too”, is a rhetorical technique that intends to discredit the opponent’s argument by attacking the opponent’s own personal behavior and actions as being inconsistent with their argument, so that the opponent appears hypocritical. This specious reasoning is a special type of ad hominem attack.
https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/tu-quoque
OldManFromKS,
Thank you for posting that. I knew of the technique but did not know the name. Learned something today!
Upstate – much obliged. It’s part of a topic called “informal logic,” which includes all of the logical fallacies. Formal (logic is more symbolic and almost a branch of math.)
If you don’t like what professors say, then go to another college.
It’s the free market, stupid.
Yup, and if I criticize the Ford Pinto for having a defect where it can easily catch fire, your response would be: it’s the free market stupid, buy a different car. As if the criticism was not valid.
https://www.autosafety.org/ford-pinto-fuel-tank/
P.S. What if all other options in the market are the same in their left-wing orthodoxy?
When people wonder why the price of cars and many things are so high, they should think about this suit. In the end, the journalism was mostly bullsh1t.
But why should they get federal dollars and have no free speech on campus. If they give up the federal money, they can do whatever they want. But if they want that money then free speech should prevail and calling for the termination of people with opposing views is against federal law and the contract with the government.
Congress has no power to fund education. Education cannot receive federal dollars. Education does not comprise debt, defense, or “general Welfare.” Article 1, Section 8. Congress has the power to tax ONLY for debt, defense, and “general Welfare,” aka ALL, WELL, PROCEED. For example, Social Security and Medicare address merely 18.7% of the population, which is nowhere near general, “ALL,” or “THE WHOLE.”
All of this written by the uber-right wing full professor who teaches at an elite university and is frequently invited to debate those with opposing viewpoints at other elite institutions. Yes, yes – poor Professor Turley and his ilk are certainly being silenced. He could shill his book with a far shorter blog post, honestly.
then why do you come here everyday?
Thanks for contributing to Turley’s popularity. We can handle your silly comments–they still rack up to the number of daily “visitors” to his blog.
What about ‘you’, Estovir. Do all your puppets ‘rack up the number of daily visitors’? One suspects they do. And maybe that’s why you’re here 12 hours per day. The only question is ‘who’ actually pays you?’. I don’t believe it’s Turley. I think you’re meddler that’s been imposed on Turley by a some proxy group Turley hesitates to rankle.
MORON ANON IS HERE 24 HOURS PER DAY
The Uber right wing professor is and has always been a Democrat and liberal. The difference is he respects the Constitution and is not full of insane hate.
https://www.fbnewsleader.com/local-columns-newsletter/professor-jonathan-turley-free-speech
Professor Turley is widely know as a moderate Democrat. Anyone who falsely refers to him as “uber-right wing” is only revealing that they are so extreme in their communism that moderate Democrats appear right-wing by comparison.
OldManFromKS,
“. . . they are so extreme in their communism that moderate Democrats appear right-wing by comparison.”
Well said!
Parts of the Democrat party have gone so far left, they make moderate Democrats like Bill Maher and PT look like 80s Regan Republicans.
Bizzaro world!
Old school Dems are getting nervous by how the radicals have displaced establishment politicians. It’s part of the communist strategy of entryism. They know a third party is a dead end, so they seek to transform one of the major parties into, essentially, a mix of communism, Islamism, and antisemitism.
Entryism (also called entrism, enterism, infiltration, a French Turn, boring from within, or boring-from-within) is a political strategy in which an organization or state encourages its members or supporters to join another, usually larger, organization in an attempt to expand influence and expand their ideas and program. If the organization being “entered” is hostile to entryism, the entryists may engage in a degree of subterfuge and subversion to hide the fact that they are an organization in their own right.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entryism
OldManFromKS,
See this one?
Pennsylvania voters want Fetterman to ditch Democratic Party: Poll
“Just over half of Pennsylvania voters believe Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA) should leave the Democratic Party, according to a new Quinnipiac University poll.
The survey found 57% of Democrats, 55% of Republicans, and 46% of independents think Fetterman should switch parties.”
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/senate/4651348/pennsylvania-fetterman-switch-parties-democrats/?utm_source=referral&utm_medium=offthepress&utm_campaign=home
I found that mildly surprising.
Between the neo-jacobin impulses expressed by a growing cadre of aggressively ignorant people and the doctrinaire reactions of the neo-communists who secretly KNOW that the ideology they have dedicated their lives to cannot survive honest and open debate and discussion, the default isn’t just to “run away”, it is to silence criticism, with a fervor that doesn’t just accept violence and assassination, but embraces it.
We have arrived at a dangerous time in which the heckler’s veto is backed with the very real threat of a final consequence.
It’s a NORK/Pol Pot/Stalinist impulse which is a warning for all of us of what’s going to happen if Democrats seize power. And that verb is chosen intentionally.
@Stewart
Spot on. Seems to me we are at a choice point. Most of us know better, but half of that number are still asleep. I don’t know what we do to awaken the cajoled or oblivious.
James,
Well, there are those of us who are informed by not reading MSM and reading independent media. I will occasionally tune into NPR to see what propaganda they are pushing or to see if they have changed.
Nope. They have not. Same left slanted bias.
As for the traditional or moderate Democrats, like my sister, they just seem willing to keep their heads in the sand or ignore the stupid and crazy rather than do something about it.
James, the “asleep” half isn’t asleep by accident. They were formed that way. Comfort, dependency, distraction, that’s an environment doing exactly what it’s designed to do. You don’t wake people up by arguing policy at them. Policy is the branch. The root is whether someone’s ever been asked to carry real responsibility, face real consequence, or think past next week.
Until that root gets touched, the argument bounces off. People don’t reason their way out of a formation they never noticed happening to them in the first place.
Another word salad of meaningless gibberish from Olly, who consistently voices strong opinions despite his fundamental lack of basic knowledge of the real world, and who is confused by words in common usage that he does not recognize, because he lives in a bubble of fantasy of his own creation.
He is like a child who invents his own secret language, using his own terminology that no one else understands.
He is not to be taken seriously by anyone.
Thanks for the boilerplate. Real helpful.
@Upstate @OLLY
I am in complete agreement with both of you. 👍🏼
We’ve seen this movie before. God help us it led to the Civil War.
That’s the part everybody misses. We’ve all seen the movie. Knowing how it ends isn’t the problem. The problem is nobody alive today actually lived through the thing that built the people who could handle it.
The Civil War generation didn’t get soft on each other by accident. Decades of different daily life, different work, different pressure, quietly built two different kinds of people who happened to share one flag. You can watch that movie a hundred times. It won’t save you. Only living through something hard enough to build restraint will.
We’re not short on people who know the history. We’re short on people who’ve had to sweat for anything that history was supposed to teach them.
Indeed. Result will be the same.
Oh sure, the dems could string up DJT literally and no one would do a thing except fly little flags.
How about we define “subject to the jurisdiction” as requiring checking in with the authorities responsible for border control and entering the country legally? Clearly entering illegaly is avoiding government jurisdiction.
Problem solved, no?
Previously censored by WordPress:
In the 14th, jurisdiction is unqualified and, therefore, absolute.
Illegal aliens are subject to limited or qualified jurisdiction, not absolute jurisdiction.
Illegal aliens cannot vote, be drafted into military service, or be called to jury duty, for example, and are not citizens.
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
14th Amendment
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.
Censored by WordPress:
In the 14th, jurisdiction is unqualified and, therefore, absolute.
Illegal aliens are subject to limited or qualified jurisdiction, not absolute jurisdiction.
Illegal aliens cannot vote, be drafted into military service, or be called to jury duty, for example, and are not citizens.
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
14th Amendment
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.
WordPress censored:
In the 14th, jurisdiction is unqualified and, therefore, absolute.
Illegal aliens are subject to limited or qualified jurisdiction, not absolute jurisdiction.
Illegal aliens cannot vote, be drafted into military service, or be called to jury duty, for example, and are not citizens.
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
14th Amendment
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.
VVVVVVVV
In the 14th, jurisdiction is unqualified and, therefore, absolute.
Illegal aliens are subject to limited or qualified jurisdiction, not absolute jurisdiction.
Illegal aliens cannot vote, be drafted into military service, or be called to jury duty, for example, and are not citizens.
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
14th Amendment
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.
Babies aren’t subject to treason either. 😏
According to reports, from 1950 to 2025 (which parallels the lifetimes of most persons on this site), more than 64,000 scientific publications have been retracted/rescinded–including those of more than 20 Nobel laureates.
Think about that number. How many persons read those original publications but never saw or remain unaware of those rescissions/revocations/invalidations?
Among the recurring causes are low quality research and INCREASED SCRUTINY of published works. BIAS and misconduct also interfere with and manipulate results. And remember, this is among the scientific community. Think about the casual, slanted, selective-fact information passed on every day in other tangential subjects/courses (sociology, political science, history, anthropology, etc.), with knowledge that a checks-and-balances system is largely unaddressed.
https://www.the-scientist.com/rising-retraction-rates-a-symptom-of-a-strained-system-74451
https://www.americanscientist.org/article/retraction-reactions
That is the real RISK a/o DANGER of academic condescension and viewpoint repression. How can we produce a new generation of intelligent critical thinking and questioning- when exposure is limited to one view or ideology?
(ha ha. correction. 1950 to 2025 parallels a PROPORTION of the lifetimes of most on this blog.) (sorry, seniors AND freshmen!)
I’ll have you know My PROPORTION’s’ are slightly distorted due to aging and microplastics. But I appreciate your concern none the less.
Smile.
You argue that this proves a danger of “viewpoint repression.” This is a complete inversion of how science operates.Papers are retracted because of honest statistical errors, irreproducibility, data manipulation, or plagiarism. They are not retracted because a “censor” didn’t like the political ideology of the scientist.
The rise in retractions noted by platforms like Retraction Watch and The Scientist is explicitly driven by increased scrutiny, open-source data requirements, and new AI detection tools that allow researchers to catch errors that used to go unnoticed.
The scientific community openly corrects its own mistakes—even when they belong to Nobel laureates. That is the exact opposite of ideological dogmatism; it is absolute fealty to data over authority.
You drop the number 64,000 retractions as if it is a shocking, terrifying figure designed to make people panic.
Let’s do the actual critical thinking: Since 1950, there have been well over 60 million peer-reviewed scientific papers published globally.
64,000 retractions out of 60 million represents roughly 0.1% of the entire scientific record.If a system has a 99.9% consistency rate, and aggressively tracks down and corrects the 0.1% that fail, that is a testament to rigorous quality control, not a sign of collapse.
@X
Good to know that in addition to being a lawyer, a doctor, political strategist, and Constitutional scholar, you are also a ‘scientist’. Uh-huh. You are welcome to start your own blog and cultivate your own following and community. Clearly all of us have a lot to learn from you. 🙄
James,
Good one!
He’s like the professor on Gilligan’s Island.
He couldn’t get laid either.
” Clearly all of us have a lot to learn from you.”
Are you certain the drek kopf is capable of recognizing sarcasm, even punctuated with an appropriate emoticon?
James,
We no longer live in an era where scientific data, legal precedents, and medical research are locked away in private university basements accessible only to a select priesthood of academics.
Today, anyone with an internet connection has instant access to primary sources:
The Law: Every Supreme Court ruling, congressional transcript, and constitutional brief is free and fully searchable via databases like Oyez and Google Scholar.
The Science: Major scientific institutions—including NASA, NOAA, and the IPCC—publish their data sets, methodology papers, and open-source climate model code online for public vetting.
The Peer Review:Platforms like PubMed and Retraction Watch allow anyone to trace a study’s credibility without needing a middleman to interpret it for them.
When I debate a point, I am not saying “trust me because I’m an authority.”
I am providing the literal data, the exact historical dates, and the specific legal precedents, an opposing point of view, or perspective. You know, things Turley is adamant he’s fully supportive of.
You don’t need a medical degree to point out a basic statistical error, and you don’t need to be a constitutional scholar to read the plain text of the 14th Amendment. Demanding that someone “show their credentials” before they are allowed to read a spreadsheet or cite a history book is just a desperate defense mechanism used by people who cannot defeat the actual arguments being presented to them.
You suggest I go start my own blog. Why would I do that? The entire point of a public comment section is to test ideas in the open market. If my arguments were wrong, you could easily pull up the actual data and humiliate me in front of the whole thread.
Instead, because you can’t disprove something, you can’t disprove the history of the 14th Amendment, and you can’t disprove the architecture of climate models, you resort to rolling your eyes or allege I’m some sort of authority on everything I discuss or bring up.
The fact that an ordinary citizen can use modern research tools to completely dismantle talking points, false narratives, or offer a disagreement isn’t a sign that I’m pretending to be a scientist, lawyer, doctor, engineer, etc—it’s a sign that your arguments are simply indefensible or poorly constructed or simply wrong when held up to the light of factual reality.
@X
‘When I want to have a conversation, firstly, I rely on other people’s thinking,’ is not the flex you seem to think it is.
You’re not a real scientist, are you?
X the Clown, no george, stop your effort to cherry pick. ”
You forget that thousands upon thousands have never been retracted because no one cares about them-they have been replaced with newer data and research. And outside of medicine/biological sciences, there are very few reviewing entities.
Your stupid attempt to show an insignificant fraction belies the fact that many articles are of little importance and in research fields of little interest to the general public -but rescissions ARE warranted in certain fields of significance to the public at large.
And your statistics that you never cite also belie the reality. 10,000 in just one year:
“The number of retractions issued for research articles in 2023 has passed 10,000 — smashing annual records — as publishers struggle to clean up a slew of SHAM papers and peer-review fraud. Among large research-producing nations, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Russia and China have the highest retraction rates over the past two decades, a Nature analysis has found.'”
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-03974-8
Too bad you can’t comprehend what you are copying.
Thank you for linking the exact Nature article. You just handed over a source that completely destroys your own point while proving you did not read past the headline.
You think waving the number “10,000” is a massive gotcha? LOL! Let’s do some critical thinking shall we?
Global academic publishers churn out roughly 5 million peer-reviewed papers every single year.
10,000 retractions out of 5 million papers is exactly 0.2%.
Even in a record-smashing year, 99.8% of published research stands firm. Waving a 0.2% error-correction rate as proof that global scientific institutions are a fraudulent sham is mathematically illiterate.
Look at who the article actually names as the drivers of this surge. Nature explicitly notes that these retractions are driven by a cleanup of fake “paper mills” and peer-review scams concentrated heavily in Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Russia, and China.
These are commercialized operations where people buy fake credentials to meet rigid regional employment metrics. This has absolutely nothing to do with the foundational physics, climate modeling, or biological consensus published by independent western labs. You are using a localized bureaucratic scam in foreign paper mills to hand-wave away core laws of thermodynamics.
You write that thousands of papers are never retracted because they have simply been “replaced with newer data.”
Congratulations, you just accidentally explained the basic definition of the scientific method.
When a paper’s conclusion is updated by newer, better data, it is superseded, not retracted. That is how science progresses.
A retraction is strictly reserved for fraud, plagiarism, or fatal structural errors. The fact that older papers are built upon and updated by newer ones is a feature of a working system, not a flaw.
Claiming that “outside of medicine/biological sciences, there are very few reviewing entities” is factually absurd. Every single scientific domain—from astrophysics to climate science to chemical engineering—operates under the exact same cutthroat peer-review journal architectures.
You copy-pasted a quote thinking it saved your argument, but all you did was prove that the scientific community is aggressively hunting down and purging the 0.2% of bad actors trying to exploit the system.
X says to another respondent, “You write that thousands of papers are never retracted because they have simply been ‘replaced with newer data.’ Congratulations, you just accidentally explained the basic definition of the scientific method. When a paper’s conclusion is updated by newer, better data, it is superseded, not retracted. That is how science progresses.”
Mr. X, your response inappropriately mixes apples with oranges. Has absolutely nothing to do with the “scientific method,” a failure of comprehension on your part.
The original comment that you jumped on correctly used the term “retractions.” You have created a mush of every publication to favor your erroneous conclusions.
The term “retraction” has a specific, very specific, meaning among publishers and editors. And it is easy to see that the person who correctly using that term meant that many revocable material is never retracted because it is simply bypassed in favor of more contemporary readings.
Mr. X, why don’t you try to educate yourself of proper parlance and use of editorial and publishing jargon, to make your commentary more acceptable.
Let’s start with some simple references from your favorite AI sources.
“The term used for a publication that is retracted due to being old or outdated is ‘”retraction.’ This indicates that the content is no longer considered reliable or relevant.”
“In academic publishing, a retraction is a mechanism by which the content of a paper published in an academic journal is disavowed so that its results and conclusions can no longer be relied upon. Retracted articles are not usually removed from the published literature but marked as retracted.”
I also notice that you have VERY recently learned a strategy of argument that you picked up from others here:
“Let’s break this down.” “Let’s look at this again.” Let’s_________, etc.” It is very easy for others to see that you have just recently absorbed and added this to your copy and paste reservoir.
Signed by a publisher and editor, =which I believe you clearly are not.
Xlax says, “Papers are retracted because of honest statistical errors, irreproducibility, data manipulation, or plagiarism.”
Cite your source, clown to show the percentage of “honest” mistakes.”
1. The Global Retraction Watch Database Analysis A massive multi-decade study published in Scientometrics and tracked by Science for ME analyzed more than 2,000 retracted scientific papers to map their exact causes:~67% are due to intentional misconduct (fraud, data fabrication, fake peer review, or plagiarism).
~16% to 20% are explicitly classified as honest errors (unintentional coding bugs, methodology flaws, or statistical miscalculations).
The remaining papers gave ambiguous or undisclosed reasons.
https://retractionwatch.com/
were you referring to this microcosmic example of a very broad problem? Indicating massive undercounting of retracted material?
“Two thousand eight hundred forty-one records for retracted publications were retrieved, of which less than half indicated that the article had been retracted. Less than 5% of publications were identified as retracted through all resources through which they were available. Within single resources, if and how retracted publications were identified varied. Retraction notices were frequently incomplete, with no notices meeting all the criteria.
Conclusions
The observed inconsistencies and incomplete notices pose a threat to the integrity of scientific publishing and highlight the need to better align with existing best practices to ensure more effective and transparent dissemination of information on retractions.”
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0895435624001823
Lin,
Seems to be critical thinking a/o questioning is hearsay to leftists orthodoxy. The good professor points that out and how those leftists want people punished for any viewpoint other than their own.
This is a group who takes delight in the death of Charlie Kirk and the assassination attempts on President Trump.
Turley Writes:
“When I noted that I regularly vote for faculty candidates who hold opposing views..
What ‘opposing views’ is Turley actually talking about??
We understand that leftwing wackos are a presence on college faculties. But should an effort be made to recruit rightwing wackos for political balance..?
How bout this: ‘Let’s get rid of all the wackos and recruit academics with mainstream views’.
“There MUST be repercussions for the lawprofs who advanced such untenable arguments. Their behavior is — and I mean this literally, not dehumanizingly — parasitic.”
I found a prison camp in the swamp with a short tempered warden.
Anonymous is Estovir suggesting violence should be used against liberals. Great message..!
You have the wrong poster scum bag
Good grief, Turley loves to invent fake outrage for gullible people. Let’s break down how basic reality actually works.
1. Free Speech is Not a Shield From Criticism: Academic freedom means the government cannot lock a professor up or fire them for publishing a weird legal theory. It does not mean their peers have to pretend the theory is smart. It does not mean they have to invite them to fancy dinners. Turley is basically crying that conservative scholars have a “right” to never be told their work is garbage. That is the exact opposite of a free market of ideas.
2. It’s Called Quality Control, Not Discrimination: If a law professor writes a paper claiming the sky is green, calling them out isn’t “intolerance.” It’s quality control. The argument trying to get rid of birthright citizenship has zero real historical backing. When other professors call it out for being sloppy, they are doing their jobs. If you write terrible research, you get left out of elite spaces. That is how academia keeps its credibility.
3. Hiring People Who are Good at Their Job is Normal: Turley complains about a Harvard professor who won’t vote to hire job applicants who get the law completely wrong. Think about that. A law school’s literal job is to hire people who get the law right. If a hiring committee thinks a candidate’s view of the Constitution is legally bankrupt, voting “no” is just basic professional judgment.
By Turley’s logic, a geography department would be forced to hire Flat-Earthers just to check a box for “intellectual diversity.”
Stop crying about censorship just because bad scholarship got a bad review.
BTW, The justices who rejected the majority opinion are originalists and textualists, the same ones who always demand the the plain reading of the law is what matters and the intent of the founders using the historical meanings of their words. In this ruling they really tried to wave off their own cherished philosophy because it conflicted with their personal views. The irony.
X, you’re point is highly valid. Turley would have us think that Climate Deniers should be perfectly free to teach science. Or the premise that the U.S. was founded as a ‘Christian nations’ should be taught as real history. The last thing we want are academics taking the view that truth is simply a matter of opinion.
The use of a term like “climate denier” is itself anti-science. It’s a blatant attempt to close off scientific inquiry with a pejorative label for people who ask questions about a “consensus.” The idea of an unquestionable “consensus” is the end of real science. Science is all about asking questions, challenging theories, and honestly looking at new evidence . . . all of which is what climate alarmist cultists are desperate to prevent.
The term “climate denier” isn’t a pejorative used to stifle debate; it is an accurate description of someone who chooses to reject an overwhelming mountain of empirical data in favor of an ideological or political narrative. True science is not about “denying” conclusions that have been verified by thousands of independent experiments over decades. When a person ignores ice core data, temperature anomalies, satellite telemetry, and ocean acidification metrics because they don’t like the political solutions, they aren’t practicing science—they are practicing denial.
You claim that a consensus is the “end of real science.” This is completely backwards. A scientific consensus is not a group of people sitting in a room voting on an ideology; it is the accumulation of consistent, reproducible resultsfrom thousands of different scientists across the globe who are all trying to prove each other wrong.
We have a scientific consensus on gravity.
We have a scientific consensus on germ theory.
We have a scientific consensus on plate tectonics.
Calling gravity an “unquestionable consensus” doesn’t mean physicists are a cult; it means the data is so overwhelmingly robust that arguing against it without extraordinary new evidence is a waste of time.
Which climate model should be used to determine national policy?
Also models are inherently chaotic, which leads to low long term confidence. I say that as someone who has written modeling software.
Many of the cli ate models don’t have that level of fidelity, its just an excel spreadsheet.
Estovir, show us an established science journal that says ‘climate models are chaotic’.
Gigi/X/George/McInliar/other-assorted-Chicken-Littles: show us one doomsday prediction from climate cultists that has come true. In 1982 Al Gore and Dan Rather were saying that soon 25% of Florida would be underwater. Alarmist snake oil hucksters have a dreary track record: in the 1960s it was going to billions of starving people because the Earth could not produce enough food (the “population bomb” followed by the “population explosion” all turned out to be false), then it was that there would be global cooling, then global warming, and now why have they stopped using the term ‘warming’ and instead use ‘change’ which is generic enough not to be pinned down. Climate change used to just be called “weather.” So GFY, we don’t believe you any more. Your batting average on these hysterical doomsday predictions is exactly . . . . zero.
Stephen Koonin’s book Unsettled has a lot to say about how climate models fail.
I doubt many deny that greenhouse gasses can have a warming effect. The debates are over how much, how fast, and with what consequences, and over the type of policy best suited to deal with emissions and/or their consequences. Those who do not see this problem as an existential threat or who oppose drastic measures that they see as unrealistic or as not being cost effective generally do not deny the basic science. Labelling them “climate deniers” is a way to avoid engaging with their arguments.
“the type of policy best suited to deal with emissions and/or their consequences.”
Not a bad comment, but the quoted statement largely obscures the very debatable premise that the behavior of human beings has any significant effect on climate change.
I agree. That is covered by “how much, how fast.”
Daniel – exactly. People who use the term “climate deniers” are very low-quality commenters. They reveal themselves as having a religious attachment to a political position, such that no amount of evidence or logic would ever get them to change their extreme position.
Um, did you take differntial equations in college? Diffeq is when this fundamental concept in math and later applied in physics is introduced. Presuming you didnt, you likely werent a math, engineering or acjence major and should be no where near any scientific discussions because you dont understand the fundamentals let alone why that is required for a policy disucssiom. None the less here’s a primer:
https://www.ebsco.com/research-starters/science/chaotic-systems
Chaotic systems refer to complex, dynamic systems that exhibit instability and sensitive dependence on initial conditions, making precise predictions extremely challenging. These systems are deterministic, meaning they follow specific rules or equations, but their inherent complexity leads to unpredictable behavior over time.
Back to the discussion.
This is precisely why if you see multiple runs of models you get highly variable predictions even utilizing the same model. The more accurate predictions are closer to T0.
Thus I ask what is the consensus for inputs, and which model do you feel is the most accurate?
This would mean that if you have high confidence for a .00001 C rise in temps, you would attempt to mitigate diffently than a 1C rise.
serious government relies on a single climate model; they use the Ensemble Approach (like the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project, or CMIP). By running dozens of independent models from different global institutions simultaneously, scientists can cancel out individual model noise and isolate the core, consistent climate trajectory.
It’s more than just an “excel spreadsheet.”
I can assure you that X never read or heard the words “Ensemble Approach (like the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project, or CMIP)” before two hours ago.
Neither did you. But I learned it was a thing. YOU did not.
Your “gotcha” isn’t what you think it is.
Do you know how the modeling works?
You break up the earth into a gridspace, then you put in your variables for each gridspace, then you run your algorithm.
Perhaps now you see where my excel comment comes in.
All you pointed out is something akin to just doing a meta analysis. A convergence of the outputs isn’t the same as agreeded upon inputs, which is why this is important for policy.
There are a few steps between learning that something is a thing and understanding how that thing works.
Wow, thanks captain obvious, you got any more advice that I already knew?
Consensus is not falsifiable. It may wind up being correct, but it ain’t science.
X wrote: “It’s Called Quality Control, Not Discrimination”
Oh I see! Why didn’t the segregationists of the early 1960s think of that?
Having read Wurman’s work on birthright citizenship I can say that is extremely good. He makes two main points, based on historical sources:
1. Birthright citizenship in the common law was based on the exchange by the parents of protection for allegiance. Protection was afforded by the sovereign to those in the realm with permission, express or implied. Those like illegal immigrants who are here without permission should not be entitled to the sovereign’s protection in the sense required to confer citizenship on their offspring born here.
2. The law regarding temporary sojourners was a bit unclear before the 14th amendment. But when that was adopted, birthright citizenship was clarified as being available only to those “subject to the jurisdiction” of the US. As was stated by many at the time, this meant being subject to the “complete” jurisdiction, just as it applies to citizens. Under established general law, this required domicile, as Justice Thomas explained in detail, in part based on Wurman’s scholarship. Temporary sojourners are not subject to the same complete jurisdiction as citizens, while those domiciled here are.
Wurman and Thomas are very persuasive. Roberts’s majority opinion is glib and superficial by comparison. It is astonishing that the court decided to remove this issue from the political arena in the face of such strong arguments.
It is discouraging that Pfaff and others should be demanding adverse consequences for scholarship with which they disagree , especially when it is beautifully done.
Daniel,
Arguments that “subject to the jurisdiction” means “complete, political jurisdiction” requiring permanent domicile face significant challenges under a strict textualist approach, which demands following the plain, public meaning of words at the time they were written. In 1868, if an undocumented immigrant committed a crime on U.S. soil, they were prosecuted, and imprisoned under U.S. law, demonstrating they were subject to the legislative, executive, and judicial jurisdiction of the United States. The framers of the 14th Amendment explicitly listed exceptions to jurisdiction, such as foreign diplomats with immunity and invading foreign armies. A textualist interpretation suggests that if the framers intended to exclude temporary visitors or unauthorized inhabitants, they would have used more restrictive language than the broad legal term “jurisdiction.”
Wurman’s “protection-for-allegiance” theory, which argues that those here without permission are not entitled to citizenship, also conflicts with the historical context of the 14th Amendment. The primary purpose of the Citizenship Clause was to overturn the Dred Scott decision and grant citizenship to formerly enslaved people. Critics argue that under a “protection-for-allegiance” framework, enslaved people—who were in the U.S. without legal standing, often denied protection of the laws, and not giving voluntary political allegiance—might have failed to qualify for citizenship. It is argued that the Reconstruction Framers would not have designed a citizenship test that excluded the very people they intended to protect.
Furthermore, during the 1866 Senate debates over the Citizenship Clause, Senator Jacob Howard and Senator Lyman Trumbull directly addressed whether this clause would grant automatic citizenship to children of immigrants who were not citizens, such as Chinese immigrants and Roma travelers. They affirmed that, provided they were not diplomats or invaders, their children born on U.S. soil would be citizens. An originalist interpretation focuses on this original public understanding.
Regarding judicial interpretation, the Supreme Court has often adhered to the principle that the Constitution means what it says, regardless of political consequences, and that the 14th Amendment sought to ensure that citizenship could not be altered by executive order.
The argument that this interpretation is a results-oriented, activist text masquerading as history is based on the view that it is an unprincipled distortion of originalism designed to validate an unconstitutional executive power grab.
Anyone entering the US without permission are invading the US.
“Jurisdiction” has many meanings. As used in the citizenship clause, “subject to the jurisdiction” was publicly understood at the time to mean subject to the “complete” jurisdiction, in the way conferred by citizenship or domicile. That is why they no longer needed to include a reference to “Indians not taxed.” It is a different concept from “within the jurisdiction” as used in the equal protection clause. Different phrases have different meanings, as a textualist might say.
Freedmen were domiciled in the US and subject to the complete jurisdiction of the US. They and their children should have been citizens, which Dred Scott denied because of their race. That is one of Thomas’s points.
Children of Chinese and Roma domiciled in the US were citizens under the 14th Amendment. Wong Kim Ark confirmed this, in the face of the government’s argument that only parental citizenship counted, not parental domicile. The citizenship clause was colourblind, as Thomas observes. Jackson’s dissent distorted what he said.
Until now, the court had not spoken on the questions of illegal immigrants or temporary sojourners. I found Wurman and Thomas persuasive on those questions. I found Roberts glib and superficial. You disagree. So be it.
no, X does not disagree. His hand-fed selective AI research does.
And….it’s not wrong.
You claim that “subject to the jurisdiction” was publicly understood to mean “complete political jurisdiction,” and that is why the framers no longer needed to include the phrase “Indians not taxed.”
As a textualist, you should know that argument is entirely backwards: The phrase “Indians not taxed” was omitted from the 14th Amendment’s Citizenship Clause because Native Americans living in independent tribes were governed by their own sovereign nations, treaties, and laws. They were not legally subject to the legislative power of the United States.
An undocumented immigrant or temporary visitor, by contrast, is completely subject to the laws of the land. If they commit a crime, they are tried in U.S. courts and sent to U.S. prisons. If they buy goods, they pay U.S. taxes.
To claim they are not “subject to the jurisdiction” when the state possesses the absolute authority to arrest, prosecute, and deport them is a logical absurdity that completely violates the plain textual meaning of “jurisdiction.”
You assert that “subject to the jurisdiction” means something radically different than “within the jurisdiction” in the Equal Protection Clause.
Let’s look at the text like an actual textualist:
The Equal Protection Clause refers to persons “within its jurisdiction,” which is a geographic boundary marker—anyone physically standing inside the state lines.
The Citizenship Clause refers to being “subject to the jurisdiction,” which is a legal status marker—meaning you are legally answerable to the sovereign power of the United States.
The only people physically present in the U.S. who are not “subject to” its jurisdiction are foreign diplomats and invading armies, because they possess diplomatic immunity or sovereign status and cannot be prosecuted under domestic law.
If the Reconstruction Framers wanted to exclude the children of unauthorized immigrants or temporary workers, they would have written an explicit exception for them—just as they did when drafting the Civil Rights Act of 1866. They didn’t.
You and Thomas are heavily relying on “parental domicile” to justify your position. But trying to slip a mandatory domicile requirement into the 14th Amendment destroys the very purpose of the clause:The primary, undisputed originalist intent of the Citizenship Clause was to permanently overturn Dred Scott and grant citizenship to formerly enslaved Black Americans.
Under the restrictive “intent to remain permanently” legal definition of domicile championed by Wurman, millions of newly freed enslaved people—who had been forcefully brought to the U.S., denied any legal standing, and stripped of the ability to choose a legal domicile—would have failed the test.
The Reconstruction Framers would never have intentionally designed a citizenship mechanism that could be used to deny citizenship to the very people they were trying to protect.
You claim Wong Kim Ark was strictly about parental domicile. That is a completely inaccurate reading of the case law.
In Wong Kim Ark, the Supreme Court explicitly adopted the centuries-old English common law doctrine of jus soli (citizenship by birth on the soil). The Court ruled that the 14th Amendment was declaratory of this fundamental common law rule. Under jus soli, the immigration status or temporary nature of the parents is completely irrelevant. The child is born on the soil, the parents do not have diplomatic immunity, therefore the child is a citizen.
You call Chief Justice John Roberts’ majority opinion “glib and superficial”. In reality, Roberts simply refused to engage in results-oriented judicial activism.
A true conservative jurist acknowledges that the Constitution means what it says, not what a modern executive branch wishes it said to enforce border policy. The Court didn’t “remove this issue from the political arena”; the Framers of the 14th Amendment removed it from the political arena in 1868 precisely so future presidents couldn’t use executive orders to strip citizenship away from targeted demographics.
Wurman and Thomas didn’t write “beautiful scholarship.” They wrote a politically motivated revision of history that got soundly rejected because it conflicts with the plain text of the United States Constitution. You can disagree all you want, but the text wins.
Tribal Indians were subject to US criminal law when the crime was against a US citizen. They were not, however, subject to the “complete” jurisdiction of the US. A crime committed against another tribal Indian, and matters of personal status, were matters for the tribes, not the US. The absence of “complete” jurisdiction is why an exception was not needed.
Domiciliaries were subject to complete US jurisdiction, for example with respect to personal matters, while temporary sojourners were not. They also carried with them this condition when they left the country, while temporary sojourners did not. Thomas and Wurman both explain this in detail.
Several Senators were explicit that “subject to the jurisdiction” meant the “complete” jurisdiction. Newspapers said the same thing. That “domicile” subjected someone to the complete jurisdiction was a long established legal principle. You can read the details in Wurman and Thomas.
“A crime committed against another tribal Indian, and matters of personal status, were matters for the tribes, not the US. The absence of “complete” jurisdiction is why an exception was not needed.”
I dislike and disagree with Roberts’ interpretation of birthright citizenship, but I have an IANL question about your analogy. Why would the differing treatment of of the crimes of Indians not be more analogous to the Constitutional concept of non-enumerated Federal powers devolving to State authority, rather than indicating a lack of jurisdiction?
Don,
This question gets to the heart of federalism and sovereignty, and the short answer is no: the status of Native American tribes is a matter of separate, inherent sovereignty, not a devolution of non-enumerated federal powers under the 10th Amendment.
Native American tribes never participated in the Constitutional Convention and never surrendered their powers to the U.S. system.
As Chief Justice John Marshall famously established in the landmark Cherokee Nation v. Georgia (1831) and Worcester v. Georgia (1832) decisions, tribes are “domestic dependent nations.”
Their authority to govern their own internal crimes and personal status does not exist because the federal government “left it to them.” It exists because they possess inherent sovereignty that predates the United States Constitution itself.
The U.S. Constitution explicitly recognizes this separate sovereign status in the Indian Commerce Clause (Article I, Section 8, Clause 3), which grants Congress the power to regulate commerce “with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes.”
By grouping Indian tribes alongside foreign nations and states, the text of the Constitution establishes them as distinct political entities. The federal government deals with tribes through treaties—a mechanism reserved exclusively for dealing with foreign sovereigns, not states.
This distinction is precisely why the authors of the 14th Amendment omitted “Indians not taxed” from the Citizenship Clause.
States are under the constitutional jurisdiction of the United States.
Tribal Nations were considered distinct political bodies living under their own laws and sovereign rulers. Because a tribal member owed their primary political allegiance to their tribe—and because the U.S. government recognized that tribe as a treaty-holding nation—they were not legally “subject to the jurisdiction” of the United States in a municipal sense.
Daniel,
You claim that Native Americans didn’t require an explicit exception because they lacked “complete” jurisdiction. This completely misconstrues nineteenth-century federal Indian law.
Native tribes were recognized under the law of nations as separate, independent political communities and “domestic dependent nations”. They possessed their own municipal laws, executed their own governance, and operated under international treaties. They were not citizens because they were subject to the sovereign authority of their own nations, not the municipal authority of the U.S..
An undocumented immigrant or a temporary tourist does not belong to a sovereign, treaty-recognized independent nation operating within U.S. borders. They are fully, 100% subject to the municipal, state, and federal laws of the United States. If they break a law, they are prosecuted and jailed by the U.S. state. Trying to compare a foreign traveler to a sovereign Native nation is a legal absurdity.
You proudly praise the “domicile test” championed by Wurman and Thomas. Yet, you completely ignore that this exact test blew up in the administration’s face during the oral arguments for [Trump v. Barbara].
When conservative Justice Neil Gorsuch pressed the administration’s lawyers on their proposed “domicile test,” asking if tribal Native Americans born on U.S. soil today would be considered birthright citizens under their definition, the lawyers completely fumbled and admitted they hadn’t thought it through.
Why? Because the moment you invent a mandatory “parental domicile” requirement to strip citizenship from immigrants, you accidentally strip citizenship away from Native Americans and historical minority groups who were legally denied the capacity to establish a formal “domicile” in 1868. The test is a modern, results-oriented invention that breaks constitutional history.
You claim that Senator Jacob Howard’s mention of “full and complete jurisdiction” supports a domicile requirement. It does not. Howard explicitly stated that “subject to the jurisdiction” meant the exact same jurisdiction in extent and quality as applies to every citizen.
Citizens are subject to the laws, courts, and police power of the United States. So are temporary visitors and undocumented immigrants.
The only people physically present on U.S. soil who are exempt from this “extent and quality” of jurisdiction are foreign diplomats (who possess diplomatic immunity) and invading foreign armies. Because a diplomat cannot be arrested or tried in a U.S. court, they are not subject to its jurisdiction. An immigrant is.
Your claim that United States v. Wong Kim Ark was strictly about “parental domicile” is a total fabrication. The Supreme Court in 1898 explicitly adopted the centuries-old English common law doctrine of jus soli (citizenship by birth on the soil).
The Court explicitly ruled that the 14th Amendment’s clause was declaratory of this rule and excluded only two explicit classes: children of foreign diplomats and children of alien enemies in hostile occupation. The Court openly declared that the immigration status, temporary status, or parental allegiance of a foreign citizen was completely irrelevant to the child’s constitutional right to citizenship.
It doesn’t matter. Let’s read only the first sentence in isolation as a 3rd grader would do and birthright citizenship becomes easily understood. Willy Wonka’s golden 🎫.
Wurrman is history.
It no longer matters as forced integration was implemented in the 60s.
Babies are being forced into citizenship by birth. Absurdity
“You disagree. So be it.”
An AI response disagreed, not GSX. GSX can only prompt the AI for one answer of many without even understanding the question or the response.
100% agree. And I have studied it too.
There’s no need for argument as the court has solidified what congress would not do.
A.I. string: ( Countries with birthright citizenship )
Around 33 countries offer unrestricted birthright citizenship (jus soli), which automatically grants nationality to anyone born within their borders, regardless of the parents’ citizenship. This policy is heavily concentrated in the Americas, where nearly all nations, including the United States, Canada, and Mexico, utilize it.
Countries with Unrestricted Birthright Citizenship:
• North America: United States, Canada, Mexico
• Central America and the Caribbean: Antigua and Barbuda, Belize, Costa Rica, Cuba, Dominica, El Salvador, Grenada, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Jamaica, Nicaragua, Panama, St. Kitts and Nevis, St. Lucia, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Trinidad and Tobago
• South America: Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Guyana, Peru, Uruguay, Venezuela
• Rest of the World: Lesotho, Pakistan, Tanzania, Tuvalu
Conditional Birthright Citizenship
An additional ~30 to 50 countries have birthright citizenship, but attach specific conditions to it, such as requiring at least one parent to be a legal resident or citizen. For example:
• Germany: A child gets citizenship if at least one parent has been a legal permanent resident for eight or more years.
• France: A child born in France to foreign parents can become a citizen automatically if a parent was also born in France.
• United Kingdom & Australia: Citizenship typically requires at least one parent to be an Australian/British citizen or a permanent resident.
Most countries in Europe, Asia, and Africa do not practice jus soli; instead, they follow jus sanguinis (right of blood), where citizenship is passed down from parents to child, regardless of the birthplace.
Ref:
U.S.-style birthright citizenship is uncommon around the world
By: Drew DeSilver – Pew Research.org ~ March 31, 2026
https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2026/03/31/us-style-birthright-citizenship-is-uncommon-around-the-world/
IMO: ‘Birthright Citizenship’ should only be granted to those whom parents are from a Country that recognizes birthright citizenship (see countries listed above) in terms of reciprocity (a birthright citizenship reciprocity).
Did you fail to understand that jus sanguinis is found more in the successful, advanced, and desirable countries, that draw in foreign immigrants like ants?
oh look, X discovered the bold function
Yes, forced integration is the policy and ushered in by President Obama.
The crucial questions are how a mindless charlatan like Pfaff ever became a professor at a law school, and how to prevent that from ever happening again. Until those questions are answered in a satisfactory manner, all else is just mental masturbation.
What stands out to me is the left as evidenced in the cases of these law school professors is so certain of their perception of truth that there is no room remaining for introspection; for questioning their beliefs. They cannot entertain any countervailing concepts which is foundational to the process of learning. They have progressed to the point that anyone who challenges their truth should be shunned, exiled, in some fashion punished. This level of hubris of absolute certainty seems to me a mental illness. The seeds of authoritarianism, a will to absolute power, have germinated and started to spread throughout academia and threaten society.
unadulterated,
Great comment.
Whether or not it’s a mental illness, it most certainly shows who holds the whip hand in academe. What a surprise, it’s the same people who control virtually all of our institutions, the mass media, and on and on.
Unfortunately, they’re just beginning.
What is also notable is that Pfaff, Kreis and their ilk are so unaware of their hubris that they don’t seem to realize that their saying, “hiring a conservative law professor is akin to allowing a believer in geocentrism to teach at a university.” would exclude from their version of a university the likes of geocentrists such as Plato, Aristotle, Ptolemy and many others.
However the real irony is that if the Pfaffs of academia got their way the theory expounded by Galileo would never have been allowed to even be discussed and they would still be stumbling around in their ignorant geocentric world congratulating one another on how brilliant they are.
-g
“The most fundamental fact about the ideas of the political left is that they do not work.
Therefore we should not be surprised to find the left concentrated in institutions
where ideas do not have to work in order to survive”
– Thomas Sowell
Yes, Thomas Sowell’s teaching should have been engrained in the colleges and universities, but the liberal professors wouldn’t stand for it since their control of ideas and free speech would be threatened. One thing I would change at all colleges and universities is to eliminate the wearing of their “colors” at graduation ceremonies. . .which is really to show others they are more educated than the rest.
Was forced integration in the US, 1960s, also authoritarian? Was declaring freed slaves 14th amendment and the condemning of their offspring to citizenship also authoritarian and imposed? Was there any attempt during the time period of a choice? Relocate or forced citizenship?
Ah the Academic Illuminati – the modern Witch Hunters! If they claim you are a witch the only way to prove your innocence is a test by fire or water. If you burn alive you are innocent BUT IF YOU DON”T BURN YOU ARE WITCH. If you drown at the bottom of the pool while weighed down you are innocent BUT IF YOU DON”T DROWN YOU ARE A WITCH!! Hmmm, same thing with diverse non-woke opinion – you must be a HATER, RACIST, and SUPREMACIST unless you can prove your innocence by RECANTING IN PUBLIC and then begging for forgiveness!! IDIOCY of the Left.
When the Soviet Union fell in 1989, there was a general opinion in the West that liberalism, in the traditional meaning of that word, had achieved a final victory over political censorship. But that view has proved to be naive. Human nature demands orthodoxy and persecution of heretics. The professors cited by JT are no less the persecutors of heresy than the judges in the witch trials of the Middle Ages.