In this episode of Independent Conversations, Graham H. Walker sits down with Richard A. Epstein, Ilya Somin and Williamson M. Evers to examine one of the most controversial questions in American constitutional law: Does the Fourteenth Amendment require automatic citizenship for everyone born on U.S. soil?
The conversation spans Richard A. Epstein’s challenge to the “plain meaning” reading of the Citizenship Clause all the way to the Naturalization Acts of 1790 and 1795, the Wong Kim Ark decision, the distinction between local obedience and full political allegiance and why courts and scholars often collapse those categories too quickly.
What You’ll Learn:
- Why “subject to the jurisdiction thereof” may not mean what modern readers assume
- How the Naturalization Acts of 1790 and 1795 shaped early American citizenship law
- Why Richard A. Epstein believes the Wong Kim Ark decision is legally weaker than many assume
- How the Fourteenth Amendment separated citizenship from voting rights
- Why Reconstruction history complicates clean modern narratives about civil rights
- How Ilya Somin frames immigration restrictions as a form of moral arbitrariness
- Why citizenship is not only a right, but also a legal and political burden
- What this debate reveals about constitutional interpretation, immigration, and national belonging
This is a necessary conversation about who gets to belong, who gets excluded and what the Constitution can actually settle.
