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Welcome to Law Talk, a production of the Civitas Institute at the University of Texas at Austin.

I am the host, Charles C.W. Cook, and I'm here, as always,

with Richard Epstein and John U. Welcome, gentlemen, to the show.

Hey, Charlie. Great to be here.

Today's topic is, in the big picture of the 14th Amendment, more narrowly the question of

birthright citizenship. Now, on the last episode, we went through the various Supreme

Court cases from last term. There was one that pertained to birthright citizenship, but the

court did not address that issue on the merits.

Instead, it looked at the question of nationwide injunctions.

So that litigation is ongoing, and as far as the Supreme Court is concerned,

it is in its future, which means this remains a live and a hot topic. And luckily for you and for me,

Richard and John have differing views on this. So I'm going to start by asking John to lay out his

view. Then Richard Epstein will lay out his view and then we will

drill down into all of the details and ancillary questions. John, take it away on birthright

citizenship and its meaning under the 14th Amendment. So it's, Charlie, this is a great idea. I'm so glad we're doing this

because in, I think the media world, you often hear one side or the other side presented.

You don't really see a tangle where we're going to get, I hope, down to the real nitty-gritty

of the evidence and the arguments. So I'm very glad we're doing this. Unfortunately,

this is one of the, probably the 10% of the issues that Richard and I disagree about. We may

agree about 90%, but when it comes to that 10%, Richard and I are like cats in a very, very small

cage. We're going to fight it out. So let me start out by saying,

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