This is CBSI on the world. I'm John Bats for being educated as I was not in my youth in law by Professor

Richard Epstein, writing at the Civitas Institute in January of this year on birthright

citizenship, which is being argued as a case before the Supreme Court oral arguments

on Friday of this week, the 16th of May, 2025, and Richard has identified passages in Blackstone,

a definitive work for English and American law, as well as the citation of a case from 1898 by the Supreme Court,

the Wang case, United States v. Wang Kim, and the Justice who wrote that opinion in 1898,

Justice Gray, Richard is identifying as misreading or misinterpreting or making an error about the meaning of blackstones.

Professor, what does this mean for the oral arguments on Friday? Are these matters going to come up?

Well, they will because the question is, if it turns out that Trump has a reasonable argument,

then in effect, you can't enjoin him from enforcing it.

So everybody's trying to say on the other side that Wong Kim Ork is a decisive case,

but they miss this point. Only subjects can be citizen.

Aliens cannot be citizens. That's what Blackstone said. That's what was said in countless other cases.

And so what he did in this particular passage is basically says that a Frenchman in England,

if they give birth to a child, give birth to an English citizen. And that was never the case.

In fact, the hostility towards aliens was so great in many ways that they could not bring a lawsuit to

recover real property in England. And the same thing was true in the United States. And so what happens

to get around the ban for people who have been unjustly deprived of their property, what they do

is they pretend that these people are citizens

of the United States when they're not.

Professor, what is the practical application of these revelations?

What does it mean for birthright citizenship?

...