And we are back with another edition of the Federalist Radio Hour. I'm Matt Kittle's senior

elections correspondent at The Federalist and your experience Sherpa on today's quest for knowledge.

As always, you can email the show at Radio at the Federalist.com. Follow us on X at FBRLST. Make sure to subscribe wherever you download your podcast

and, of course, to the premium version of our website as well. Our guest today is Professor

Richard A. Epstein, Lawrence A. Tisch Professor at NYU, Parker Hall Distinguished Service

Professor of Law Emeritus, and a senior lecturer at the

University of Chicago.

He's also the author of the compelling new book, The Myth of Birth Rights Citizenship, What

the 14th Amendment Really Says.

We're going to find out what the 14th Amendment really says in context of,

well, history and in context of the modern day battle over what birthright citizenship is.

Professor Epstein, thank you so much for joining us. Oh, it's a pleasure to come.

Absolutely. I think I told you

before we got started that it's such a compelling issue and a topic because it has so much

history contained in it. And I think, you know, we could go back to 1868 when the 14th Amendment, you know, became part of the U.S. Constitution.

But I think we need to go back a little farther.

Maybe to Marbury v. Madison, when Chief Justice John Marshall said, it is emphatically the province and duty of the

judicial department to say what the law is. It's the concept that we've talked about for a long

time in this country on judicial supremacy. Thomas Jefferson didn't care much for Marshall's idea, though.

He later asserted that Marshall's idea would have the effect of, quote,

placing us under the despotism of an oligarchy. As we turn the page further into history in before the Civil War and the Dred

Scott decision, an abominal decision that was led by the Tauny court, we have Abraham Lincoln

...