Traditional notions of citizenship are based primarily on two different doctrines: jus sanguinis and jus soli.[1] The former determines who has citizenship on the basis of whether the individual’s parents possess citizenship, whereas the latter determines citizenship on the basis of the individual’s country of birth.[2] While the current political debate over birthright citizenship often centers on this Clause,[3] a more fundamental debate concerns which model of citizenship best promotes the common good of the nation, as well as which model best comports with the dignity of the human person. [4]

The Citizenship Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution[5] has been understood to embrace jus soli citizenship, but Congress has granted jus sanguinis citizenship in a few select circumstances.[6] In dissenting from the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent holding that the issuance of “universal injunctions” [7] against the Executive Branch exceeded the authority given to the federal district courts by Congress,[8] Justice Sonia Sotomayor asserted that being “subject to the jurisdiction”[9] of the United States consists only in “being bound to [the United States’s] authority and its laws.”[10] The principal dissent further maintained that the plain text of the Citizenship Clause prohibited the government from denying the rights of citizenship to any person born on American soil, and implied that denying this fact is tantamount to impermissible discrimination under the Constitution.[11] Yet, whatever the true interpretation of the Clause, there is also a legitimate question whether human dignity requires or implies birthright citizenship. Indeed, scholars have pointed out that the Citizenship Clause was meant as a direct response to the Court’s infamous decision in Dred Scott v. Sanford,[12] which held that blacks were not citizens within the meaning of the Constitution.[13] Given this historical backdrop, it would be foolish to ignore the fact that laws about which persons are entitled to the dignity of American citizenship have been abused for invidious, discriminatory purposes.

The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) has voiced its opposition to attempts to abolish birthright citizenship.[14] After describing the current landscape of Citizenship Clause jurisprudence, the USCCB’s office of Migration Policy and Public Affairs stated that, “The Church believes that a repeal of birthright citizenship would create a permanent underclass in U.S. society, . . .undermining the human dignity of innocent children who would be punished though they did nothing wrong; . . . .”[15] In other words, the U.S. Bishops appear to argue that repealing birthright citizenship is inimical to human dignity.[16] However, the Bishops do not condemn a jus sanguinis form of citizenship as a matter of principle, as they do not say that limiting citizenship to those whose parents are citizens[17] is immoral.

To the contrary, the Church has consistently upheld the right of nations to control immigration in their respective countries. [18] A nation’s focus on kinship of blood connotes not simply a desire to maintain a similar genetic make-up but an emphasis on the commonality of national identity within a particular community and an effort to preserve national culture. Opponents of birthright citizenship invoke the importance of an individual’s national allegiance as a means of defining citizenship.[19] By requiring a physical link to the nation, a jus sanguinis approach to citizenship recognizes the familial nature of the political community, which is comprised of members who share a common bond with one another and who naturally seek to advance the common good of their fellow countrymen. And while there may exist much room for debate over the proper interpretation of the Fourteenth Amendment’s Citizenship Clause, the principle of jus sanguinis communicates an essential anthropological truth, which is that man is meant to live in a family.[20] Defining citizenship to require only that individuals be “bound to [U.S.] authority and its laws” ignores this truth.[21]

[1] Katherine Nesler, Resurgence of the Birthright Citizenship Debate, 55 Wash. U. J.L. & Pol’y  215, 215 (2017).

[2] Id.

[3] See, e.g., Samuel Breidbart & Maryjane Johnson, Birthright Citizenship Under the U.S. Constitution, Brennan Cent. for Justice (Dec. 5, 2025), https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/birthright-citizenship-under-us-constitution (on file with the Ave Maria Moot Court).

[4] See, e.g., Dignitatis Humanae, [On the Right of the Person and of Communities to Social and Civil Freedom in Matters Religious], ¶ 2 (1965).

[5] U.S. Const. amend. XIV, § 1 (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.”).

[6] Nesler, supra note i, at 215-16.

[7] See Trump v. CASA, Inc., 606 U.S. 831, 841 (2025) (defining a “universal injunction” as “district courts asserting the power to prohibit enforcement of a law or policy against anyone [sic].”).

[8] Id.

[9] U.S. Const. amend. XIV, § 1.

[10] Id. at 881 (Sotomayor, J., dissenting) (citing to N. Webster, An American Dictionary of the English Language 732 (C. Goodrich & N. Porter eds. 1865).

[11] Id. at 881 (Sotomayor, J., dissenting).

[12] See Nesler supra note i, at 218-19.

[13] Dred Scott v. Sanford, 60 U.S. (19 How.) 393, 407 (1857) (“In the opinion of the court, the legislation and histories of the times, and the language used in the Declaration of Independence, show, that neither the class of persons who had been imported as slaves, nor their descendants, whether they had become free or not, were then acknowledged as a part of the people, nor intended to be included in the general words used in that memorable instrument.”).

[14] Cynthia M. Smith, The Catholic Church’s Position on Birthright Citizenship, U.S. Conf. Cath. Bishops https://www.usccb.org/issues-and-action/human-life-and-dignity/immigration/catholicchurchandbirthrightcitizenship (on file with the Ave Maria Moot Court).

[15] Id.

[16] Id.

[17] See Nesler supra note i, at 215.

[18] See Catechism of the Catholic Church ¶ 2241 (2d ed. 1997).

[19] See, e.g., William M. Stevens, Jurisdiction, Allegiance, and Consent: Revisiting the Forgotten Prong of the Fourteenth Amendment’s Birthright Citizenship Clause in Light of Terrorism, Unprecedented Modern Population Migrations, Globalization, and Conflicting Cultures, 14 Tex. Wesleyan L. Rev. 337, 344 (2008) (arguing that the Supreme Court’s decision in United States v. Wong Kim Ark, 169 U.S. 649 (1898) “confus[ed] ‘subject to the jurisdiction thereof’ (allegiance to the United States) with ‘jurisdiction’ (the right of the United States to enforce its laws)” [sic].”).

[20] Catechism of the Catholic Church ¶ 2207 (2d ed. 1997) (“The family is the original cell of social life.”).

[21] Trump, 606 U.S. at 881 (Sotomayor, J., dissenting).