# The 14th Amendment, the 1868 Text That Outlasted Trump > Introduction: a national anniversary under constitutional strain - Author: Maxime Marquette - Publisher: MadMax (https://mad-max.co) - Section: Profile - Published: 2026-07-03 - Canonical URL: https://mad-max.co/en/article/portrait-le-14e-amendement-ce-texte-de-1868-qui-a-resiste-a-trump ## Introduction: a national anniversary under constitutional strain ### A ruling handed down days before America's 250th Just days before the 250th anniversary of the American declaration of independence, celebrated on July 4, 2026 across the country according to **Newsweek** and the **New York Times**, the **Supreme Court** handed down a ruling that goes straight to the heart of what it means to be American. On June 30, 2026, in **Trump v. Barbara**, the nation's highest court preserved, for now, the constitutional guarantee of citizenship at birth, rejecting the **Trump** administration's attempt to unilaterally redefine that fundamental right by **executive order**. ### The profile of a text that survived America's darkest hours This profile traces the history of the **14th Amendment**, a text drafted in the ashes of the Civil War to correct one of the most shameful rulings in **Supreme Court** history, and which, 158 years later, still defines who can rightfully call themselves a citizen of the **United States**. I want to show here how an amendment born of the need to repair the wound of slavery became, almost by accident, the constitutional battlefield of twenty-first century **immigration** — a historical arc as fascinating as it is instructive. ## **Dred Scott**, the ruling that had to be erased ### "Blood, not soil," the shameful doctrine of 1857 In 1857, in **Dred Scott v. Sandford**, the **Supreme Court** ruled by a vote of 7 to 2 that an enslaved person and his descendants could never become American citizens — a decision the Court itself, in the 2026 **Barbara** ruling, summed up in one chilling line: under **Dred Scott**, "blood, not soil, had become the rule." **Dred Scott**, born enslaved in **Virginia**, had been sold to a military surgeon who took him into territories where slavery was banned, yet that changed nothing about his legal status in the eyes of the Court at the time. ### The Civil War and the broken promise of Reconstruction The horrors of the Civil War and the promise of **Reconstruction** that followed led to the ratification of the **14th Amendment** in 1868, a text explicitly designed to overturn the **Dred Scott** doctrine and permanently guarantee citizenship to people once held in bondage. Chief Justice **John Roberts**, in his 2026 majority opinion, described the amendment's purpose as "permanently engraving" the guarantee of citizenship, insulated from the whims of any future **Congress**. ## The Civil Rights Act of 1866, the forgotten forerunner ### A fragile law that inspired a solid amendment Even before the **14th Amendment** was ratified, **Congress** had passed the **Civil Rights Act of 1866**, granting citizenship to "all persons born in the **United States** and not subject to any foreign power," an **early legislative attempt** quickly judged vulnerable to repeal by a future **Congress** or to judicial invalidation. That perceived fragility of a mere statute directly drove the drafting of the **14th Amendment**, to anchor the guarantee of citizenship directly in the **Constitution** itself, shielded from shifting political majorities. ### Language built to include, not exclude The congressional record of the era shows that the language of the **14th Amendment** explicitly included the children of immigrants, regardless of race, nationality, or how "desirable" their parents were seen to be by nineteenth-century **American** society. That original intent, extensively documented in the historical congressional debates, directly contradicts the arguments the **Trump** administration advanced in 2025 to justify its **executive order** restricting **birthright citizenship**. ## **Wong Kim Ark**, the forgotten hero of American citizenship ### A San Francisco cook who changed history **Wong Kim Ark**, born in 1873 in **San Francisco** to Chinese parents, was detained by customs officials upon returning from a trip to China in 1895, on the claim that he was not an American citizen despite having been born on American soil — a case that would become one of the foundational rulings of American constitutional law. With help from the Chinese mutual aid association **Six Companies**, **Wong Kim Ark** took his case all the way to the **Supreme Court**, which ruled in his favor by a vote of 6 to 2 in 1898, confirming that the citizenship clause incorporated English common law and granted citizenship to nearly all children born on American soil. ### A hundred and twenty-five years of settled precedent Justice **Horace Gray**, author of the **majority opinion** in **Wong Kim Ark**, explained that while the amendment's primary goal was establishing the citizenship of Black people born in the **United States**, it applied more broadly and was not restricted "by color or race." That interpretation has held for more than 125 years of consistent precedent, according to analysis from the **American Immigration Council**, making **Wong Kim Ark** the most cited precedent in the 2026 **Barbara** ruling for rejecting **Trump's** order. ## The **Barbara** ruling, a fragile 2026 victory ### Five votes, one justice on a narrower ledge In **Trump v. Barbara**, decided on June 30, 2026, Chief Justice **John Roberts**, joined by Justices **Amy Coney Barrett**, **Sonia Sotomayor**, **Elena Kagan**, and **Ketanji Brown Jackson**, concluded that **Trump's** order directly violated the citizenship clause of the **14th Amendment**. Justice **Brett Kavanaugh**, the sixth vote against the presidential order, took a narrower position, finding that the executive order violated a federal statute that **Congress** could amend, rather than the **Constitution** itself — a distinction that considerably weakens the scope of the victory. ### Nearly eighteen months of legal uncertainty This ruling comes nearly eighteen months after **Trump** signed his controversial order, a period during which every single court that examined the question, without exception, found the order unconstitutional, a year after the **Supreme Court** had initially sidestepped the underlying question to focus on lower courts' power to issue universal injunctions. According to the **American Immigration Council**, the Court reached the right result, but only barely — a finding that should temper any excess of celebration among defenders of **birthright citizenship**. ## **Thomas** and the 91-page dissent ### A contested historical reinterpretation Justice **Clarence Thomas**, joined by Justice **Neil Gorsuch**, wrote a **91-page** dissent arguing that the **14th Amendment**, though designed to guarantee equal rights to formerly enslaved Black people, has been "hijacked for political projects that the Reconstruction **Congress** did not support." Justice **Ketanji Brown Jackson**, in her concurring opinion, shot back that **Thomas's** vision "bears little relation to the history of its ratification" and "evades the entire meaning of the Second Founding," calling the Reconstruction amendments an "anti-caste, anti-subordination reset for the Nation, not a one-time patch on the dark stain of slavery." ### The domicile theory, absent from the constitutional text **Thomas's** dissent rests on a theory that the phrase "subject to their jurisdiction" carries an implied "domicile" requirement, meaning permanent residence in the United States — a reading the **American Immigration Council** calls a gloss found nowhere in the actual text of the **14th Amendment**. Justice **Samuel Alito**, in a separate dissent, injected policy arguments against **immigration**, raising the specter of "birth tourism," even though the deputy solicitor general admitted at oral argument to having no concrete evidence to support those claims. ## Folarin **Balogun**, the human face of an abstract debate ### A soccer striker born by accident on American soil **Folarin Balogun**, the top scorer for the U.S. men's national soccer team, was born in July 2001 in **New York** to a British mother of Nigerian descent who was visiting the city and had been denied boarding for her return flight to **London** due to her advanced pregnancy. Raised in the **United Kingdom**, **Balogun** was only able to represent the United States on the international stage because of his chance birth on American soil, a concrete example cited by the **American Immigration Council** to illustrate the very real human consequences of this otherwise abstract constitutional debate. ### Under Trump's order, a different future Under the executive order **Trump** tried to impose, a future **Balogun** would not be considered an American citizen, despite an identical birth on the same American soil — a hypothetical that shows just how retroactively and arbitrarily this policy shift would have affected millions of people. The **American Immigration Council** makes this point with welcome clarity: no one should have to become an international sports star to prove their status or worth as an American citizen, a principle that should apply equally to everyone, famous or anonymous. ## Executive Order 14,160, anatomy of a failed attempt ### Two categories targeted by the order Executive Order number **14,160**, titled **"Protecting the Meaning and Value of American Citizenship,"** sought to exclude two categories of children from automatic citizenship: those whose mother was unlawfully present in the United States and whose father was not a citizen or lawful permanent resident, and those whose mother was lawfully but temporarily present, with a father who was not a citizen or permanent resident. This seemingly precise technical wording would in practice have created a two-tier system in which citizenship depended on the exact immigration status of both parents at the precise moment of birth — an administrative complexity several analysts called unmanageable at scale. ### A unanimous rejection from the lower courts Every federal court that examined the order, without a single exception, found it unconstitutional before the case ever reached the **Supreme Court**, a rare judicial alignment that reflects the fundamental legal weakness of the **Trump** administration's argument. That lower-court unanimity, ignored in presidential rhetoric branding the final ruling "too bad for our country," is a reminder that **Trump's** defeat at the **Supreme Court** was, in reality, only confirmation of an already well-established judicial consensus. ## What this means for the future of the immigration debate ### **Kavanaugh** opens a legislative door Justice **Kavanaugh's** narrower position, basing his rejection of the order on a federal statute rather than the **Constitution**, implicitly hands **Congress** an invitation to legislate a narrower right to citizenship, a **legislative path** considerably less demanding than a constitutional amendment. House Speaker **Mike Johnson** has in fact confirmed that **Congress** is weighing both a legislative response and, potentially, a constitutional amendment, a dual strategy showing the debate is far from settled despite the Supreme Court's ruling. ### An international community watching closely The United States is among roughly thirty countries, including **Canada** and **Mexico**, that automatically grant citizenship to anyone born on their territory, an increasingly rare practice worldwide, and one that **Trump's** attempt would have pushed closer to the more restrictive standards practiced elsewhere. This international dimension of the debate deserves emphasis: by trying to restrict **birthright citizenship**, the **Trump** administration was implicitly proposing to bring the United States closer to the practices of nations far less committed to the traditions of welcome and openness that have historically defined American identity. ## A battle that reaches far beyond American borders ### The West facing its own contradictions This American constitutional battle resonates well beyond U.S. borders, at a moment when several Western democracies, grappling with their own immigration debates, are watching closely how the world's oldest constitutional democracy manages the tension between border control and the fundamental rights written into its founding text. An **America** that betrayed its own constitutional principles on citizenship would hand a valuable rhetorical weapon to the authoritarian regimes of **Russia**, **China**, and **Iran**, which never miss a chance to point to the internal contradictions of Western democracies to legitimize their own repressive practices. ### Why this profile matters for democracy's future I believe deeply that the strength of American democratic institutions, including their capacity to resist attempts at constitutional workarounds by executive order, remains essential to the broader credibility of the **West** against its strategic adversaries. That is why this historical profile of the **14th Amendment** is not a mere academic exercise: it illustrates the resilience, admittedly fragile, of the constitutional guardrails that still distinguish a functioning democracy from a system where executive power could unilaterally redefine who belongs to the nation. ## Lessons from a debate that is far from over ### A victory that does not eliminate future attempts Despite the Supreme Court's favorable ruling, this victory does not end future attempts to restrict birthright citizenship, particularly if the Court's composition were to shift in coming years with the replacement of even one of the five justices in the majority. Vice President **JD Vance** has explicitly promised that the administration will keep fighting on this issue, calling the ruling a mere reprieve rather than a definitive victory for defenders of birthright citizenship. ### The Justice Department's role after the defeat The **Department of Justice** has ordered federal prosecutors to prioritize investigations into alleged "birth tourism," an administrative move showing that the **Trump** administration intends to keep fighting **immigration** through other levers despite its resounding legal defeat on the constitutional merits. This administrative persistence, documented by several outlets including **Fox News**, is a reminder that constitutional battles won in court do not always translate immediately into lasting political peace on the ground. ## The 30 countries that share this legal tradition ### **Birthright soil law**, a North American exception gone global The United States is among roughly thirty countries worldwide, including **Canada** and **Mexico**, that automatically grant citizenship to anyone born on their soil, a legal tradition known as **jus soli**, or right of the soil, as opposed to **jus sanguinis**, the right of blood that prevails in most European countries. This North American peculiarity, often overlooked by the general public, explains why the birthright citizenship debate resonates so differently in the United States than in countries like **France** or **Germany**, where citizenship has historically depended more on descent than on place of birth alone. ### A comparison that clarifies the American stakes This international comparison helps explain why **Trump's** attempt to restrict birthright citizenship represented such a radical paradigm shift: it would have pushed the United States closer to European standards rather than preserving the North American tradition of **jus soli** that traces directly back to the **14th Amendment**. Defenders of birthright citizenship point out that this tradition of soil-based citizenship has always been seen as a defining element of American identity, distinct from the more restrictive European traditions grounded in ancestry. ## The historical precedents of failed restriction ### Repeated attempts since the 1990s Since the 1990s, several attempts in **Congress** have sought to restrict birthright citizenship, whether through a legislative redefinition of the term **"jurisdiction"** or through a proposed constitutional amendment aimed directly at overturning the **Wong Kim Ark** precedent, but none of these proposals was ever successfully adopted. This string of earlier legislative failures shows that even before the **Trump** administration, the political and legal consensus in favor of birthright citizenship remained solid enough to withstand restriction attempts, despite decades of intermittent debate over immigration policy. ### Why Trump chose the executive route over the legislative one Facing the predictable failure of a legislative or constitutional reform, **Trump** chose the route of an executive order on day one of his second term in 2025, a strategy that deliberately bypassed the longer, more uncertain legislative process before **Congress**. This approach, which bet on speed of execution over legal soundness, ultimately backfired on the administration when every single court, without exception, found the order unconstitutional before the case ever reached the **Supreme Court**. ## The message sent to America's immigrant families ### Eighteen months of anxiety for millions of households During the eighteen months this legal battle dragged on, millions of American immigrant families lived in uncertainty over the citizenship status of their own children born on American soil, a daily anxiety rarely quantified but deeply real for the people living it. This prolonged period of uncertainty illustrates the real human cost of abstract constitutional battles, a cost that judicial statistics and the Supreme Court's lengthy opinions rarely manage to fully convey to the general public. ### A resolution that does not erase the scars Even though the Supreme Court's final ruling confirmed the constitutional protection of birthright citizenship, this legal victory does not retroactively erase the anxiety these families lived through for nearly two years, nor does it guarantee such an attempt will never happen again. This human reality, often absent from purely legal analyses of the **Barbara** decision, deserves to be remembered: behind every 194-page opinion are real lives affected by constitutional uncertainty. ## Conclusion: a text that continues to define America ### A hundred and fifty-eight years later, the same fight The profile of the **14th Amendment** that emerges from this 2026 case reveals a troubling continuity: the same text drafted to correct the injustice of **Dred Scott** continues, a century and a half later, to face repeated attempts to narrow its reach, whether against the children of Chinese immigrants in the nineteenth century or against the children of Latin American immigrants today. This resilience of the text, reaffirmed once again by the 2026 **Barbara** ruling even if only narrowly, speaks both to the wisdom of its original framers and to the persistent fragility of constitutional protections in the face of successive executive ambitions. ### An anniversary that invites reflection On the eve of America's 250th anniversary, this ruling is a reminder that the question of who belongs to America remains a living, contested one, far from settled despite two and a half centuries of constitutional history. This profile of the **14th Amendment** ends, then, not on a note of absolute certainty, but on a call for vigilance: constitutional texts, however solid on paper, never defend themselves and require constant civic mobilization to preserve their original meaning. **By Maxime Marquette, columnist** ## Columnist's transparency note ### Editorial stance I am not a journalist but a **columnist and analyst**. My expertise lies in observing and analysing the geopolitical, economic and strategic dynamics that shape our world. My work is to take political strategies apart, to understand global economic movements, to put the decisions of international actors in context and to offer analytical perspectives on the changes that are redefining our societies. I do not claim the cold objectivity of traditional journalism, which stops at reporting facts. **I claim analytical clarity**, rigorous interpretation and a deep understanding of the complex issues that concern us all. My role is to give meaning to the facts, to place them in their historical and strategic context, and to offer a critical reading of events. ### Method and sources This text keeps the basic distinction between **verified facts and interpretive analysis**. The rule never changes: a factual claim is published only when a verifiable source supports it, and the sources this article actually used are listed under **Sources**, never here. **Primary source families** used by the publication, when the story has them: official statements from governments and international institutions, public statements by political leaders, reports from intergovernmental organisations, dispatches from recognised international news agencies. **Secondary source families**: specialised publications, internationally recognised news media, analyses from established research institutions, reports from industry organisations. When an article cites statistical, economic or geopolitical data, it comes from the institutions that produce it (intergovernmental organisations, central banks, national statistics offices), and the exact institution is named under **Sources**. ### Nature of the analysis The analyses, interpretations and perspectives in the analytical sections of this article are a **critical, contextual synthesis** based on the information available, the trends observed and the expert comments cited in the sources consulted. My role is to interpret these facts, to set them in the context of today's geopolitical and economic dynamics, and to give them a coherent meaning within the larger story of the changes shaping our time. These analyses reflect expertise built through continuous observation of international affairs and an understanding of the strategic mechanisms that drive global actors. This article describes a documented state of affairs on its publication date, not a prediction: later developments may shift its outlook. No update is promised in advance; when an article is corrected or completed, the change is dated in the text. ## Sources ### Primary sources - [Birthright Citizenship: The 14th Amendment Lives On — American Immigration Council, July 2, 2026](https://www.americanimmigrationcouncil.org/blog/birthright-citizenship-14th-amendment-lives-on/) - [A history of birthright citizenship at the Supreme Court — SCOTUSblog, February 6, 2025](https://www.scotusblog.com/2025/02/a-history-of-birthright-citizenship-at-the-supreme-court/) ### Secondary sources - [United States v. Wong Kim Ark — Wikipedia, accessed July 2, 2026](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Wong_Kim_Ark) - [This Man Won Birthright Citizenship for All — The New York Times, February 10, 2025](https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/10/us/this-man-won-birthright-citizenship-for-all.html) - [US 250th Anniversary: 2026 Dates, Events and Celebrations — Newsweek, December 26, 2025](https://www.newsweek.com/us-250th-anniversary-2026-dates-events-and-celebrations-11192393) - [Opinion: The Supreme Court's birthright citizenship ruling isn't a catastrophe — The Washington Post, June 30, 2026](https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2026/06/30/supreme-court-birthright-citizenship-ruling-isnt-catastrophe/) --- Source: Maxime Marquette, MadMax. When citing, name the author and link https://mad-max.co/en/article/portrait-le-14e-amendement-ce-texte-de-1868-qui-a-resiste-a-trump