- District of Columbia v. Heller, 554 U.S. 570 (2008), is a landmark case in which the Supreme Court of the United States held that the Second Amendment protects an individual's right to possess a firearm, unconnected with service in a militia, for traditionally lawful purposes, such as self-defense within the home...
United States v. Wong Kim Ark, 169 U.S. 649 (1898), is a United States Supreme Courtcase in which the Court ruled 6–2 that a child born in the United States, of parents of Chinese nationality who at the time had a permanent domicile and residence in the United States and were carrying on business there but not as employees of the Chinese government, automatically became a U.S. citizen. This decision established an important precedent in its interpretation of the Citizenship Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution.
Since the 1990s, controversy has arisen in some circles over the practice of granting automatic citizenship via jus soli to U.S.-born children of illegal aliens—controversially dubbed the "anchor baby" situation by some media correspondents and advocacy groups.
Public debate over the issue has resulted in renewed discussion of the Wong Kim Ark decision.
Some legal scholars, opposed to the idea that jus soli should apply to the children of illegal aliens, have argued that the Wong Kim Arkprecedent does not apply when alien parents are in the country illegally. John C. Eastman, a former dean of the Chapman University School of Law, has argued that Wong Kim Arkdoes not entitle U.S.-born children of illegal aliens to gain automatic citizenship because, in his opinion, being subject to the jurisdiction of the United States requires a status of "full and complete jurisdiction" that does not apply to aliens who are in the country illegally. Eastman further argues that the Wong Kim Arkdecision was fundamentally flawed in the way it dealt with the concept of jurisdiction, and that the Indian Citizenship Act of 1924—which followed Wong Kim Ark—would not have been necessary if Congress had believed "that the Citizenship Clause confers citizenship merely by accident of birth." A similar analysis of the jurisdiction question has been proposed by Professor Peter H. Schuck of the Yale School of Law and Rogers M. Smith, political science professor at Yale. According to law professor Lino Graglia of the University of Texas, even if Wong Kim Ark settled the status of children of legal residents, it did not do so for children of illegal residents; Graglia asserts that the case weighs against automatic birthright for illegal immigrants because the Court denied such citizenship for an analogous group, namely "children of alien enemies, born during and within their hostile occupation".
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