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.
Speech isn’t conduct.
Storming a government building is, though.
Yeah, like those Antifa terrorists do every day.
Yep, some bad conduct indeed. Like burning down a City during the summer of love or impeding a federal immigration enforcement officer from his lawful duty.
Censorship bureaus in the Soviet Union would criticize people for what they would say, too.
Criticism is usually the first step down the slippery slope.
Your suggestion that there’s something wrong with criticism is the actual first step down the slippery slope to totalitarianism.
The next thing you know, Turley will criticize Kevin Bacon for how he expresses himself through the art of dance.
Awww, poor baby. Is Professor Turley causing your depression by calling out outrageous left-wing nefarious conduct? Is he getting under your skin?
HAHAHAHAHAHA!!!
E-gads! God forbid! The world will never recover! If Professor Turley criticizes Kevin Bacon, that will be the end of the world as we know it!
It’s fun to troll the trolls, isn’t it?
Why yes, yes it is.
It is remarkable that CBS will not be carrying Trump’s address tonight, despite its MAGAification by its new boss, Bari Weiss.
Obviously she knows that Trump will make a complete fool of himself, and she is invoking that old philosophical theory that if a tree falls in a forest and nobody is there to hear it, did it really happen, only in this case with regard to a speech.
This position gives her plausible deniability that the speech did not really happen.
^ This CCP bot apparently is programmed to say the same propaganda twice. It really should look up the meaning of “Barbra Streisand effect.” It has now created a buzz around the upcoming speech in which Trump will lay bare Chinese infiltration into American elections. ^
Estovir, if the Chinese are meddling in our elections, why did Trump gut the FBI’s Cyber Security forces as soon as he came back to office?
What Trump did was dismantle Biden’s Orwellian ministry of truth and government-social-media censorship complex.
And yes, I’m Estovir. Everyone is Estovir. Estovir is under your bed, in your closet, and in your bathroom waiting to say “Boo!” in the middle of the night. BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH!!!
Whitehouse.gov
Declassified verified documents
For your reading pleasure
Clairvoyant post!
The Demoratic Socialists tried to sell us the lie of Trump and Russia collusion when All evidence shows it is them and the Chicoms.
Turley is the one who is a control freak.
ANON FREAK!!
Thankfully all the broadcast networks will be ignoring the sad and sorry spectacle of our profoundly mentally ill and demented president addressing the nation tonight with his nonsensical rants and grievances about the ancient history of the 2020 election.
Not even CBS is going to carry it live. Even Bari Weiss, the new MAGA boss of CBS senses that Trump is going to make an absolute fool of himself and is opting for a “special report” with selected highlights after it is over.
Trump will be left howling into the void of Fox News.
Tonight marks the beginning of the end of the Republican party.
The November election will be an extinction level event for the Republicans, who will be relegated to the sidelines for decades to come.
^ This Chinese bot was specially programmed here today by the CCP, which is scared s**tless about Trump revealing how deeply they have their fingers into our election. The CCP commies don’t know about the Streisand effect ^
Republicans . . .will be relegated to the sidelines for decades to come
Last time you made that claim about “decades to come,” soon thereafter the GOP had the White House and control of both houses of Congress.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!
Trump will be left howling into the void of Fox News
Earth to CCP bot: we’re no longer in the 20th century. There’s this little thing called the Internet, alternative media, YouTube, and individual platforms. And Fox’s audience is more than the other networks combined.
And the only people seeking out those alternative sources will be MAGA morons such as yourself. In other words the people who have already drunk the Kool-Aid. These nonsensical election interference conspiracy theories exist only in the MAGAverse.
The point is that the vast majority of the population will not even be aware the speech is taking place. Trump was obviously hoping to reach a much larger audience beyond the MAGA moron faithfuls who already believe this nonsense. Now his plan has been thwarted.
He will simply be howling into the void of an audience who already believes this crap.
He will be preaching to the choir, and will not reach anyone beyond the MAGA faithful.
His address will be absolutely pointless.
The point is that the vast majority of the population will not even be aware the speech is taking place.
Pretty much everyone knows it’s taking place. Many liberals I know have told me they plan to watch. The leftist commies I know have said they won’t because they don’t like facts and logic. They tell me they don’t want any actual information that might cause them to be uncomfortable with their extremist beliefs.
Real Americans are concerned about foreign influence in our elections. Only nitwit leftist commie dweeb moron imbeciles like you would suggest that’s not a problem.
You really do live in a bizarre bubble of fantasy.
Everyone YOU know is aware it is taking place, but you and the people you know are a tiny sliver of the population.
None of the broadcast networks will be covering the speech.
Anyone wanting to watch Trump will have to actively seek out a source to do so.
The vast majority of the population are completely passive in watching TV.
If it is not on any of the networks they will not see it, and they will not even be aware it is happening.
Fort Pierce grand juries may think otherwise
What’s a broadcast network?
Profoundly mentally ill MORON ANON!!
What do you mean “our” law schools, kemosabe? Sounds like something a communist would say.
The meaning was obvious: America’s law schools. Law schools located in the United States of America. What is your IQ?
Are you sure that this is a blog committed to free speech, and not an ad hoc censorship bureau?
This is a reminder that academics are no different than non-academics–some are open-minded and tolerant of opposing views and others are not. It is the system that prevents the intolerant from taking over. In academics it is tenure and, to a lesser extent, the culture of academic tolerance. In the nation it is the First Amendment. Thank God there are some institutional restraints on intolerance.
Restraints? And what are those exactly?
It is the system that prevents the intolerant from taking over.
That system does not appear to exist in higher education.
X/George and Olly have both suddenly started to conform to each other in constructing their contributions to this site.
They start each consecutive paragraph with the word, “Your….” such as “Your sentence that….” or “Your conclusion that…..”
But even more noticeable is that both have constructed their arguments with a peculiar style: “Not this. But that.”
facetious Examples: “It is not ice cream. It is colored milk loaded down with sugar and food coloring.”
Or, “It is not clever approach to a horse. It is a deceptive example of how to get kicked.”
Or, “It is not purple or violet. It is a dirty prism that distorts the wavelength.
Are they both just copying and learning from each other, or ?
This has become so common between them that either they are both lifting from AI or each other, OR they are both ___________?
Olly is an 79 y/r old homosexual in a relationship with … ask it.
Proclamation 80—Calling Forth the Militia and Convening an Extra Session of Congress
“On April 15, 1861,…President Abraham Lincoln issued a proclamation calling forth the state militias, to the sum of 75,000 troops, in order to suppress the rebellion. He appealed ‘to all loyal citizens to favor, facilitate, and aid this effort to maintain the honor, the integrity, and the existence of our National Union.’”
Proclamation 92—Warning to Rebel Sympathizers
“[On] July 17, 1862,…I, Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States, do hereby proclaim to and warn all persons within the contemplation of said sixth section to cease participating in, aiding, countenancing, or abetting the existing rebellion or any rebellion against the Government of the United States and to return to their proper allegiance to the United States on pain of the forfeitures and seizures as within and by said sixth section provided.”
________________________________________________________________________________________
Abraham Lincoln was a Great American President.
Now President Donald J. Trump MUST implement his rendition of “The Lincoln Era”; close the border; rescind rebel sanctuary cities; compassionately repatriate all illegal and unassimilable aliens since Jan. 1, 1863; issue mass temporary work permits with no path to citizenship; revoke birthright citizenship; make English the sole official language; commence a war to defeat the rebellion; impose martial law; suspend habeas corpus; “smash” rebel printing presses, networks, podcasts, and social media platforms; and imprison political opponents and rebel judges, all in order to save not the Union but the Nation, eradicate communism and the communist American welfare state, and place America squarely back on the Constitution and Bill of Rights, including absolute freedom, free enterprise, free industries, free markets, private property, and minimal taxation and regulation, alongside infinitesimal constitutional government.
No shit. Of course they will be shunned. One would not want a biologist who teaches creationism, a doctor who hates germ theory, and in the same way no law prof who is against birthright citizenship has any business being a professor.
Why is comradette sally promoting the unintended, illegal, and unconstitutional acquisition of citizenship by criminal illegal aliens?
The communists (liberals, progressives, socialists, democrats, RINOs, AINOs) need all the “fake” votes they can get, legal and otherwise.
Incidentally, if denying women the vote was good enough for the Greeks who created democracy in 508 B.C., why isn’t it good enough for the nation established by its Founding Fathers?
It’s long past time to repeal the 19th dumbmendment.
No wonder the American fertility rate is 1.57 and in a “death spiral.”
If the duty of men is to fight their nation’s wars, what, exactly, is the duty of women, if not to bear their nation’s children?
Ride, sally, ride!
That’s a stupid remark. Law isn’t a science. It’s created, whole cloth, by people who will always have different ideas of what the black-letter law and its interpretations are. For example, we constantly see ignorant liberals talk about deportation as if it is a CRIMINAL ACT with full Constitutional rights. It is NOT. It is a CIVIL and you don’t have the same rights in a civil action as in a criminal.
So there we are. Your ignorance vs reality.
Thank you, Sally. Turley keeps acting like Climate Denial should be taught by Koch-sponsored academics at the best schools.
Who denies there is a climate?
Never has been climate change in 4.5 billion years.
Again, who denies there is a climate?
In 1492, the Spanish ordered the Jews to “recant” their religion or leave, and later, many who remained were murdered. In 1933, the Germans forced the Jews to leave, and by 1941, they began their mass slaughter.
If we remove the horrendous physical murders of people, in both cases, this intellectual self-destruction directly triggered the downfall of those civilizations.
By demanding that dissenting colleagues be frozen out of academic life until they “recant”, Professor Pfaff is pushing the exact same dogmatic idea on our universities.
I certainly hope this leads to their downfall.
S. Meyer,
To say, “If we remove the horrendous physical murders, it’s the exact same dogmatic idea,” is an insult to basic human history.
The Holocaust and the Inquisition were state-mandated, legally enforced, systematic campaigns of physical terror, property confiscation, and genocide carried out by the absolute power of the government.
Professor John Pfaff is an individual private citizen writing an angry opinion on BlueSky. He has zero institutional power. He cannot arrest anyone, he cannot confiscate property, and he cannot deport anyone.
Trying to claim that a professor getting roasted on the internet by his peers for writing a legally bankrupt paper is “just like 1933 Germany” is the absolute best of internet victim-complex delusion.
You don’t care about free speech, you don’t care about academic freedom, and you don’t care about “tolerance.” You are just furious that a conservative legal theory got thoroughly humiliated in the public square, and now you are throwing a tantrums wishing for the destruction of higher education because the facts didn’t care about your feelings.
Stop hiding behind the tragedies of history to shield lazy, debunked scholarship from being criticized by its peers. It’s embarrassing.
Poll the student body.
Stfu
‘Professor John Pfaff is an individual private citizen”
GSX: That is well understood, and as a private individual, he represents the makeup of those who “legally enforced, systematic campaigns of physical terror, property confiscation, and genocide carried out by the absolute power of the government.” You do as well.
Your rhetoric represents an individual lacking sufficient intellect to understand the written word and expand it to its ultimate conclusion. You cannot think before you write and analyze what your own words mean. You are a fool, failing to prove your intellect above the level of a snail. I am embarrassed for you.
S. Meyer,
Your response is a spectacular, incoherent trainwreck. You got so blinded by raw, sputtering rage that you accidentally argued that any private individual who posts an angry tweet is legally enforcing state-sponsored genocide. Wow.
Let’s re-read the absolute comedy of what you just wrote: You claim that because Professor Pfaff is a private individual, he “represents the makeup of those who legally enforced systematic campaigns of physical terror… and genocide.” And apparently, so do I.
You lecture me about “expanding words to their ultimate conclusion.” The ultimate conclusion of my words is simple: A professor writing a harsh critique of a poorly researched legal theory is practicing standard academic peer review.The ultimate conclusion of your words is that you are a hysterical, fragile pearl-clutcher who needs to pretend a mean internet post is literally Nazi Germany just so you can play the victim.
Every time you open your mouth, you expose your own reading comprehension failures.
GSX, you are so easily tied up with the Nazi mindset; you don’t recognize that my comment pointed the finger at you.
S. Meyer,
Dont think you have to hope. Seems they are doing it all on their own. Dont interrupt them while they are leading their own downfall and try not to get any mess on you when they hit bottom.
As I have stated in the past, I fully support their 1sA rights to let us and the whole world know exactly how they think and feel. Let us know exactly how intolerant and shallow they are and their warped view of reality.
How marvelous!
I just hate it that after Covid, censorship, DEI, and other forms of wokeness, our younger generation is being deprived of educational opportunity. We have to remember that people like Stalin depended on the ignorant, like GSX, to fill their ranks and murder those who demonstrated critical thinking skills.
You are the dumbest SOB the internet has ever encountered. End it. Please.
You must be the rabid animal that escaped from the zoo.
Meyer, your comment helps explain why most younger Americans are turning against Israel. No one wants to hear holocaust comparisons to justify letting Climate Deniers in the classroom.
I’ve never heard anyone deny that there’s a climate.
I have heard climate cultists use the term “climate denier” to describe anyone who questions their cult-like religious dogma.
Was your comment meant to have an intelligent, rational point? Maybe you should try again.
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.
WHY are still talking about this? It’s done in stone and YES, the court is part of the fundamental transformation for CRISSAKE. Enjoy the 2nd class citizen or PRAY for rescue.
The singular American failure is the judicial branch, with emphasis on the Supreme Court.
AI Overview
The Supreme Court struck down President Donald Trump’s executive order attempting to end birthright citizenship in a 6-3 decision on June 30, 2026. In a landmark ruling for the 14th Amendment, five justices concluded that the order was unconstitutional, and a sixth barred it on immigration law grounds.Trump is actively attempting to overturn this outcome. In July 2026, his legal team petitioned the Supreme Court to rehear the case, arguing the initial decision was a “miscarriage of justice”. As of mid-July 2026, the Court has not indicated whether it will grant the rehearing request.
___________________________________________________________________
At some point, the Supreme Court has to start making rational and correct decisions.
Because secession is not prohibited, secession is prohibited???
Because foreign illegal aliens criminally cross the border, foreign illegal aliens have babies that are American citizens.
That is exactly what John Say would say.
More of Turley trying to normalize Trump’s effort to overturn the Fourteenth Amendment with one of those 180 Project 2025 Executive Orders signed on day one. Turley is also trying to defend the Leo Leonard Federalist Society SCOTUS justices who would have sided with Trump–which is why they were put on the court in the first place–by pretending that there’s some “good faith” basis to disagree with the plain wording of the Fourteeneth Amendment. No reasonable attorney, judge, law professor or non-MAGA legal expert I am aware of believes there was ANY “good faith” basis for interpreting the Fourteenth Amendment any way other than to hold that a child born in the United States is a citizen of the United States. The Fourteenth Amendment is as plainly-worded as possible. To pretend otherwise is to be motivated by the hyperpartisanship of Trump and MAGA. Turley is also implying that MAGA and conservatism are the same thing. They are not. And, any law professor who pretends that there is any dispute about the meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment should not be teaching law. It’s not some liberal vs. conservative thing at all–it’s called “jurisprudence”.
Judicial (and by extension, legal academic) activism unfortunately occurs on both ends of the political aisle.
Making up an “originalist” defense of Trump’s Executive Order is no different from the judicial activism that was prevalent on the left during the 20th Century civil rights era.
Both were wrong. And the “scholarship” that informed both should be worthy of criticism.
In fact, the term “Law Office History” was originally used by the right in 1965 to criticize how the liberal Warren Court cherrypicked historical facts to justify landmark rulings.
Fun fact: Historian Alfred H. Kelly, who coined the term, was actually hired by Thurgood Marshall to manipulate data to present a clear, definitive anti-segregation narrative for his legal brief in Brown v. Board of Education. This flawed, outcome driven history is now used in precisely the same manner to support conservative activism.
Both sides-ism has to comport with reality to be believable.
That is not what “both sides-ism” means.
The above does not give equal weight to opposing viewpoints. The above is a methodological critique comparing similar, historically documented arguments used across the political spectrum.
There is no moral equivalence, such as the following statement: “Liberals used selective history to end segregation, and conservatives are using selective history to defend travel bans, so both movements are equally harmful to American society.”
The point is that outcome-driven scholarship is a consistent, observable phenomenon. The aim is to call out intellectual opportunism, not political balance.
Please understand the terms you are using before you use them to attack others.
Forced integration is the solution? Authoritarian isn’t it? Some freedom, FORCED 😂
It wasn’t. You should make an account so we know which idiot you are when you say things like that. Lawrence Tribe went nuts and pushed unConstitutional positions than you can shake a stick at.
1. Tribe assured President Biden that it was entirely legal. It wasn’t and Biden’s lawyers and even Nancy Pelosi pushed back on that.
2. Tribe argued that California passing a clearly unconstitutional law that would have barred presidential candidates from appearing on the state ballots without disclosing tax records was actually constitutional.
3. Tribe argued that a California passage of an anti-gun rights law that was used to mock the holding of the Supreme Court’s abortion ruling in Dobbs was constitutional. It was not.
4. Tribe and the Democrats are pushed a new interpretation of the 14th Amendment that would allow state officials to bar Trump from the ballots. It was unconstitutional.
That’s just one liberal law professor who gave advice to Biden. There were many, many more who were even more unhinged.
Both sides. Pretending otherwise is a lie.
Whoops. I edited #1 too much. That was about overly broad student loan forgiveness.
You have hit the nail completely on the head. This is the most intellectually honest and accurate assessment of the entire thread. It completely bypasses the partisan cheerleading and exposes the exact structural rot inside modern constitutional scholarship.
Your critique of the modern right’s defense of the birthright citizenship executive order is spot-on. True originalism and textualism demand fealty to the plain public meaning of the text at the time it was enacted.
To twist “subject to the jurisdiction” into a mandatory, multi-layered property-domicile test is not originalism.
It is a transparent, results-oriented legal fiction manufactured by a handful of think-tank academics to give a veneer of constitutional legitimacy to a specific, modern anti-immigration policy.It is the exact definition of judicial activism, just wrapped in a conservative flag.
Your historical example of Professor Alfred H. Kelly and the Brown v. Board of Education brief is an accurate parallel.
In 1953, the Supreme Court explicitly asked both sides to brief the original intent of the 39th Congress regarding segregated schools when they passed the 14th Amendment.
As Kelly himself later famously admitted in his 1965 address to the American Historical Association, his job for the NAACP was to do a “reconstruction of history” and engage in “manipulation of data” to provide a definitive, clean narrative that simply did not exist in the messy, conflicted historical record.
When the Warren Court ran with that outcome-driven history, the right was understandably furious.
The ultimate irony—and the core of your argument—is that the modern conservative legal movement has now fully adopted the exact same sin they spent 50 years criticizing.
They spent decades railing against the “living constitution” and activist judges inventing rights out of thin air. Yet, the moment they gained a supermajority on the Supreme Court, fringe elements of the movement immediately started cherry-picking nineteenth-century dictionary definitions and obscure legal treatises to engineer a brand-new, activist interpretation of the 14th Amendment.
This is exactly why the academic backlash against scholarship like Ilan Wurman’s was so severe. It wasn’t “viewpoint discrimination” against a conservative. It was a professional immune response against bad, outcome-driven history.
If a legal scholar creates a flawed, cherry-picked narrative to justify a massive expansion of executive power—regardless of whether they are on the left or the right—their peers have a professional obligation to call it out.
Thank you for bringing actual historical literacy and objective legal criticism back into a thread that has been drowning in partisan delusion.
It seems to me that Wurman and Thomas each offer a better account of the historical record than Roberts.
The 14th Amendment as RATIFIED and UNDERSTOOD BY ORDINARY PEOPLE AT THE TIME did NOTHING to change the terms and timing of when babies born to non-Naturalized immigrants obtained U.S. Citizenship. Search the historical record and you’ll find this: The children of immigrant parents (under age 21) became US Citizens automatically on the same day the parent(s) Naturalized. It’s is called Citizenship by Derivation.
Ratification of Constitutional change insists on proof of broad public support behind changes to meaning and impact. It’s a check on self-righteous, elitist, political activists who think they know better than The People. There are those that believe, once Amended, the lingo of the Amendment is there for future activists to completely detach from its original intent, and creatively reinterpret (by a Plaintiffs and sympathetic Judges) to mean something that COULD NEVER gain broad public support. This “living Constitution” ploy is a brazen attempt to circumvent Article V — and the public consensus it requires — using court cases and black robed judges instead.
The true measure of the meaning of 14A (ratified in December 1868) is how Americans’ behavior and expectations visibly changed starting in January 1869. Black Americans were suddenly allowed to marry, to own property, contract their labor, and bequeath property upon their death…big, obvious changes. Babies born to immigrants saw no change — they had to await their parents’ Naturaliztion (usually just the father). If asked to prove Citizenship, a son produced his father’s Naturalization papers — not his own birth certificate. If you want to know what was actally being approved during Ratification, you need look no further than changes in everyday practices.
Trump vs. Barbara really only got 4 votes affirming an indiscriminate Constitutional birthright, when you read Kavanaugh’s concurrence citing Title 8, Section 1401(a) as the governing law.
What deprives Trump v. Barbara of Constitutional authority and legitimacy is that unconditional birthright citizenship has never been ratified through a rigorous show of broad support — it stands in arrogant, elitist defiance of “the consent of the governed”.
Your argument presents a completely fabricated version of 19th-century legal history. You are confusing Derivative Citizenship (which applies to children born outside the U.S. whose parents later naturalize) with Birthright Citizenship (which applies to children born inside the U.S. geographic borders).
The Naturalization Act of 1802 stated that children born abroad became citizens when their immigrant parents naturalized in the U.S. That is Derivative Citizenship. It had absolutely nothing to do with babies born inside the United States. You are rewriting basic immigration law because you don’t understand the difference between a child born in Ireland and a child born in Boston.
No reasonable attorney, judge, law professor, or liberal wack job believed that abortion was ever a federal, constitutional right as it stood for fifty years illicitly.
Oh, and secession is not prohibited; therefore, secession is prohibited, and owners shall be deprived of the property they shall not be deprived of.
These are some sick people.
No, I stand corrected; the people who listen to and believe these people are some sick people.
Why has Trump put David Pakman on an enemies list?
Why does this seem to violate the First Amendment of the Constitution?
Why does it seem that this enemies list does very little to uphold the Constitution?
Academia is in disrepute. The American public will stop supporting it. These intolerant faculty and administrators need to be fired for failing to uphold what academia should be. The law schools have become the worst and are turning out radicals who don’t believe in our system. It is another symptom of the Left’s obsession that everything has to be political and politics has to invade everything.
Is it any wonder that the alumni giving participation rate has experienced a significant decline since 1990 (20% to 6%). Public universities have taken the biggest hit in terms of both participation rate and donation amount and are more dependent on state and federal funding. Interestingly, national fundraising is at a high level because a small number of wealthy donor contribute a increasing amount, reflecting perhaps tax and legacy considerations.
The singular American failure is the judicial branch, with emphasis on the Supreme Court.
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“…courts…must…declare all acts contrary to the manifest tenor of the Constitution void.”
“…men…do…what their powers do not authorize, [and] what [their powers] forbid.”
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“[A] limited Constitution … can be preserved in practice no other way than through the medium of courts of justice, whose duty it must be to declare all acts contrary to the manifest tenor of the Constitution void. Without this, all the reservations of particular rights or privileges would amount to nothing … To deny this would be to affirm … that men acting by virtue of powers may do not only what their powers do not authorize, but what they forbid.”
– Alexander Hamilton