A view of the Supreme Court building in Washington, D.C.
A view of the U.S. Supreme Court building in Washington, D.C., July 19, 2024. (Kevin Mohatt/Reuters)

One needs more than a close case and divided dissenters to overturn 128 years of precedent.

The factor that we’ve heard too little about in Trump v. Barbara is the role of stare decisis, the doctrine of respecting settled precedents. Not a single justice mentioned the issue explicitly. On one level, that is not surprising. The signal precedent on birthright citizenship of the children of foreigners, United States v. Wong Kim Ark (1898), did not involve the two subjects of Donald Trump’s executive order: the children of transients (or “birth tourists”) and the children of illegal aliens. Moreover, the government conspicuously declined to ask the Court to overrule Wong Kim Ark.

Justice Clarence Thomas, in his dissent, ...

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