A.2. Citizenship

Citizens are the Sovereigns of the United States. Anyone born or naturalized in the U.S., and under its laws, is a Citizen of the U.S. and their home State or Territory.

Members of federally recognized Tribes are also presumed to be Citizens of the United States unless they explicitly renounce that Citizenship. They can be dual Citizens of their Tribe and of the United States.

A child born outside the United States to at least one Citizen parent is a Citizen at birth.

Citizenship gets debated hotly and at length. This isn’t new. Under the Articles of Confederation, control of citizenship belonged solely to the individual states. Each state had its own rules, which caused enough confusion that the Philadelphia Convention granted Congress the power “To establish an uniform Rule of Naturalization…” in the Constitution of 1789.^[1] The year after the new constitution took effect, Congress passed the Naturalization Act of 1790. It established that free white aliens could apply for citizenship, and that any of their children who were under twenty-one at the time of their parents’ naturalization would also be citizens.^[2] While this did establish a rule for naturalization, the broader rule of citizenship was not addressed in constitutional law or federal statute. So, in practice, states continued to administer their own definitions where naturalization wasn’t at issue. For African Americans, the rules varied significantly from state to state until 1857.

For free white males, the states mostly relied on precedent from English common law. They applied the principle of jus soli (right of soil), which we commonly call “birthright citizenship” today, to men born within the confines of the United States. For those children of citizens who were not born on U.S. soil, they applied the principle of jus sanguinis (right of blood). That is, they were considered citizens because they were children of citizens.

In 1857, the infamous Dred Scott decision declared that African-Americans not only weren’t, but could never be, citizens. It also discussed the applicability of common law vs. United States court, among other things.^[3] After our shameful and bloody Civil War, the United States ratified the Fourteenth Amendment, which states, in part, “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States….”^[4]

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[1] U.S. Const. art. I, § 8, cl. 4

[2] Naturalization Act of 1790, ch. 3, § 1, 1Stat. 103.

[3] Dred Scott v. Sanford, 60 U.S. 393 (1856)

[4] U.S. Const. amend. XIV, § 1.