Why America Keeps Battling to Live Up to the 14th Amendment

From Its Post-Civil War Origins to Today’s Immigration Debates, the Constitutional Guarantee of Equal Protection and ‘Birthright Citizenship’ Has Been Bitterly Contested

The first clause of the 14th Amendment is a scant 28 words long. Yet when the amendment was adopted on July 9, 1868, it advanced the crucial task of turning former slaves into full citizens of the United States. And by recognizing that anyone born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to its jurisdiction, is automatically a U.S. citizen, the amendment would go on to take center stage in some of the most important legal decisions of the last hundred years.

Now the 14th Amendment is again embroiled in …