What Is a Citizen?

 

This year’s Supreme Court session ended at the end of June, which is usual. The fact that the final days of June are watched like a sporting tournament tells us the judiciary has more power than it ought to have.

We were assured, by Hamilton in Federalist 78: 

[T]he judiciary, from the nature of its functions, will always be the least dangerous to the political rights of the Constitution; because it will be least in a capacity to annoy or injure them. The Executive not only dispenses the honors, but holds the sword of the community. The legislature not only commands the purse, but prescribes the rules by which the duties and rights of every citizen are to be regulated. The judiciary, on the contrary, has no influence over either the sword or the purse; no direction either of the strength or of the wealth of the society; and can take no active resolution whatever. It may truly be said to have neither FORCE nor WILL, but merely judgment; and must ultimately depend upon the aid of the executive arm even for the efficacy of its judgments.

In other words, it has only the words of its opinions—and what power the society as a whole grants to those opinions.

When the opinions are good, we are pleased that they have clarified and verified the law. When the opinions are not good, we are frustrated that their opinions have the power of law, as if they had power to legislate. We were promised by our founders that we would not be put into this position. And yet here we are.

Here is what Thomas Jefferson said about such a situation:

"[T]he opinion which gives to the judges the right to decide what laws are constitutional and what not ... would make the judiciary a despotic branch. ... [T]he germ of dissolution of our federal government is ... the federal Judiciary ... working like gravity by night and by day, gaining a little today and a little tomorrow, and advancing its noiseless step like a thief, over the field of jurisdiction, until all shall be usurped. … They are construing our Constitution from a co-ordination of a general and special government to a general and supreme one alone.”

 Several of the cases this session deserve a good discussion. But for today we’ll just cover the final one. The Supreme Court rendered its decision about birthright citizenship on June 30^th, the last day of the 2025 session. It deserves a post of its own. The question—still unanswered—in Trump v. Barbara is, What is a citizen?

It shouldn’t be that difficult to answer, on par with “what is a woman?” which is another question at least one of our justices cannot answer. It takes a certain obtuseness, maybe only possible by well-educated individuals lacking wisdom and moral fiber, to fail to understand such basics.

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