Comments on: Independence Day!

By: Ted Folkman

Ted Folkman — Sun, 05 Jul 2026 19:32:20 +0000

In reply to Ralph Stone. Thanks for the comment, Ralph! I agree that we have done a better job of preserving the common law on this point as with some others. One of the great advantages of our written constitution. I don’t think much of Justice Thomas’s view. If a migrant comes here illegally, having left his home and with the intention of staying here permanently, why would we think his domicile is not here? And with regard to dual citizenship or allegiance, can it really be that a foreign state can say who is or is not a US citizen by fiddling with its own citizenship law? I think this is a question with an easy legal answer, an answer that was self-evident for many decades until politics got in the way.

By: Ralph Stone

Ralph Stone — Sun, 05 Jul 2026 16:52:58 +0000

You start with the proposition “at common law…” and proceed to say “the rule of jus soli … applies almost everywhere in the New World.” But it does not apply in the UK, Australia, New Zealand or countless other common law countries. Outside of the common law, it pretty much doesn’t apply anywhere in Europe, the Middle East or Asia, frankly most of the world outside of the Americas.
Immigration is a great thing critical to our country’s future. Birth tourism appears to be numerically trivial, and I have a hard time thinking of it as a problem. But it isn’t as obvious to me that that the court’s decision was necessarily the only right decision, and I found Thomas’s dissent quite cogent.