Professor Bernadette Meyler weighs in on what the 14th Amendment gurantees in regards to birthright citizenship. 

The Citizenship Clause of the 14th Amendment is as follows: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.”

The issue of birthright citizenship has a long and complex history in the United States. Current debate concerns the children of immigrants living in the United States illegally. Are these children are entitled to full, automatic U.S. citizenship, regardless of their parents’ immigration.

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Bernadette Meyler is the Carl and Sheila Spaeth Professor of Law at Stanford Law School, where she is a scholar of British and American constitutional law and of law and the humanities. She also participated in an April 2015 conference at the Center about the Declaration of Independence.

William Mayton is the Thomas J. Simmons Professor Emeritus of Law at the Emory University School of Law, where he taught constitutional and administrative law for many years. He is also author of the forthcoming book, The Sustainers: Citizens of the United States, which deals heavily with the 14th Amendment.