United States v WONG Kim Ark

choi

Amy Qin, 这名华裔为所有人赢得美国出生公民权. 纽约时报中文网, Feb 11, 2025
https://cn.nytimes.com/usa/20250 ... supreme-court/dual/

, which is translated from

Amy Qin, After a Century, a Crackdown could redefine who is American. New York Times, Feb 12, 2025, at page A1.

Note:
(a) After reading the first several paragraphs, you need not read the rest, but explore the laws directly. See next.
(b)
(i)
(A) 黄金德  Wong Kim Ark
https://zh.wikipedia.org/zh-hans/黄金德
(B) The Simple Wikipedia does have section 1 Background about Mr Wong. See United States v Wong Kim Ark
https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Wong_Kim_Ark
(ii)
(A) The en.wikipedia.org (which is NOT simple Wikipedia) does not have a page specifically about him, but only about his case before United States Supreme Court. Still, that Wiki page (en.wikipedia.org (NOT simple) for "United States v Wong Kim Ark"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Wong_Kim_Ark
has section 1 Background, section 1.1 Early history of United States citizenship law
, that is informative. Please read it in its entirety.

In the same Wiki page, section 1 Background, section 1.3 Chinese Exclusion Acts
explains: "Congress in 1882 enacted the Chinese Exclusion Act, which placed limits on Chinese immigration to the United States.[68] (The original Chinese Exclusion Act was amended several times[69]—such as by the 1888 Scott Act[70] and the 1892 Geary Act[71]—and as a result, it is sometimes referred to in the plural as the 'Chinese Exclusion Acts.') Chinese already in the US were allowed to stay, but they were ineligible for naturalization."
(B) Also in this Wiki page, section 1 Background, section 1.2 Citizenship clause of the Fourteenth Amendment:
The Fourteenth Amendment (adopted in 1868, after Civil War) to the United States Constitution provides in the first sentence (which is also known as Citizen Clause): "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." This was to address that blacks (enslaved or free) and Native Americans, though born in the United States, had not been citizens of the United States under the original constitution (and the Fourteen Amendment sought to change that).
(C) And in this Wiki page, section 2 Case history, section 2.2 Lower Courts doubles back on Section 1 Background, section 1.2 Citizenship clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, section 1.2.2 Cases prior to Wong Kim Ark, which references "an 1884 case, In re Look Tin Sing.[47][48] Look Tin Sing [陆润卿] was born in Mendocino, California in 1870 to Chinese immigrants. In 1879, his merchant father sent him to China; but upon returning from China in 1884 at age 14, he was barred from reentering the United States by officials who objected to his not having met the documentation requirements imposed at the time on Chinese immigrants under the Restriction Acts of 1882 or of 1884.[49] Look's case was heard in the federal circuit court for California by US Supreme Court Associate Justice Stephen J Field and two other federal judges."

Footnote 47 (of the Wiki page) supplies the citation: In re Look Tin Sing, 21 F. 905 (Cir.Cal. 1884)
https://casetext.com/case/in-re-look-tin-sing
, where F stands for Federal Reporter.
(iii) Presently there is no United States Circuit Courts. What we have had since 1912 is United States Court of Appeals (for the Ninth Circuit, for example, which includes California). From 1789 to 1912, the federal judiciary had United States Circuit Courts as intermediary courts (somewhat sandwiched between United States District Courts and United States Supreme Court). Somewhat, because United States Circuit Courts had both original (to hold trials) and appellate jurisdictions. See
United States circuit court.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_circuit_court
("had trial court jurisdiction over civil suits of diversity jurisdiction [plaintiff and defendant are citizens of different states’ the term citizen NOW encompass anyone, including illegal alien] and major federal crimes. They also had appellate jurisdiction over the United States district courts. * * * Congress had borrowed the general idea of circuit courts from England [in England judges were riding circuit, moving around (in a circuit) in a region to hear local cases] * * * After 1802, only one justice was assigned to each circuit, and a quorum could consist of a single justice or judge. * **  The burden of circuit riding was somewhat alleviated by the appointment of circuit judges under the Circuit Judges Act of 1869, but was not abolished until the creation of the intermediate courts of appeals in 1891," which were still called United States Circuit Courts until 1912, when the (court) name was changed to United States Court of Appeals)

Thus,
(A) in those years, Congress tinkered with lower federal courts, so I will focus on 1884, the year In re Look Tin Sing was decided;
(B) that is why In re Look Tin Sing had one Supreme Court justice (surnamed Field) to try the case, alongside two District Court judges. If the case had been appealed to United States Supreme Court (by United States), Justice Field of the latter court would have recused himself (in the latter court).
(iv) Latin "in rē" means, in English, "in the matter (of)."
(A) Latin-English dictionary:
* rē: "ablative singular of [noun feminine] rēs [thing, matter]"
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/re
* jūs (noun neuter): "law, right"
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/jus
* soli: "genitive singular of [noun neuter] solum [land, soil]"
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/soli
* sanguinis: "genitive singular of [noun masculine] sanguis [blood]"
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/sanguinis
(B) "The ablative case in Latin (cāsus ablātīvus) appears in various grammatical constructions, including following various prepositions."  en.wikipedia.org for "ablative case."


(c)
(i) United States v Wong Kim Ark
https://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=3381955771263111765
("they [Wong's parents] were at the time of his birth domiciled residents of the United States, having previously established and still enjoying a permanent domicil [sic] and residence therein at San Francisco")
(ii) domicile (n + vt only (no vi): "Did You Know?: Domicile traces to Latin [noun feminine] domus, meaning  'home ' "/ "variants or less commonly domicil"):
vt: "law: to establish in or provide with a domicile  <the state where the decedent was domiciled>"
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/domicile

(d)
(i) The United States Constitution per se
https://uscode.house.gov/static/constitution.pdf
mentions citizen of United States and citizen of a state, but defines neither.

The federal constitution does say, in Article I, Section 2, Clause 3: "Representatives and direct Taxes shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union, according to their respective Numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole Number of free Persons, including those bound to Service for a Term of Years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other Persons."
(ii) Now I will return to Note (b)(ii)(A):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Wong_Kim_Ark
("In 1857, the United States Supreme Court held in Dred Scott v Sandford[20] that slaves, former slaves, and their descendants were not eligible under the Constitution to be citizens")
(iii)
(A) For procedural history of the case, see Dred Scott v Sandford
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dred_Scott_v._Sandford
("The decision involved the case of Dred Scott, an enslaved black man whose owners had taken him from Missouri, a slave-holding state, into Illinois and the Wisconsin Territory, where slavery was illegal. When his owners later brought him back to Missouri, Scott sued for his freedom and claimed that because he had been taken into 'free' US territory, he had automatically been freed and was legally no longer a slave. * * * In 1853, Dred Scott again sued his current owner John Sanford, but this time in federal court [sitting in Missouri, not in New York]. Sanford returned to New York and the federal courts had diversity jurisdiction under Article III, Section 2 of the US Constitution")
(B) Dred Scott v Sandford, 60 U.S. 393 (1857)
https://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=3231372247892780026

Quote:

"There are two leading questions presented by the record: 1. Had the Circuit Court of the United States jurisdiction to hear and determine the case between these parties? * * * [Dred Scott] was, with his wife and children, held as slaves by the defendant, in the State of Missouri; and he brought this action in the Circuit Court of the United States for that district, to assert the title of himself and his family to freedom. * * * The defendant pleaded in abatement to the jurisdiction of the court, that the plaintiff [Scott] was not a citizen of the State of Missouri, as alleged in his declaration, being a negro of African descent, whose ancestors were of pure African blood, and who were brought into this country and sold as slaves [United States Supreme Court would accept this position, and hold that federal judiciary had no jurisdiction based on diversity of citizenship; Supreme Court did not base its decision on slave's being counted as 3/5 of a free person]." page 400.

"The situation of this population [whose ancestors were negroes of the African race, and imported into this country, and sold and held as slaves] was altogether unlike that of the Indian race. The latter, it is true, formed no part of the colonial communities, and never amalgamated with them in social connections or in government. But although they were uncivilized, they were yet a free and independent people, associated together in nations or tribes, and governed by their own laws. Many of these political communities were situated in territories to which the white race claimed the ultimate 404*404 right of dominion. But that claim was acknowledged to be subject to the right of the Indians to occupy it as long as they thought proper, and neither the English nor colonial Governments claimed or exercised any dominion over the tribe or nation by whom it was occupied, nor claimed the right to the possession of the territory, until the tribe or nation consented to cede it. These Indian Governments were regarded and treated as foreign Governments, as much so as if an ocean had separated the red man from the white; and their freedom has constantly been acknowledged, from the time of the first emigration to the English colonies to the present day, by the different Governments which succeeded each other. Treaties have been negotiated with them, and their alliance sought for in war; and the people who compose these Indian political communities have always been treated as foreigners not living under our Government." pages 403-404.


(e)
(i) jus soli
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jus_soli
("Jus soli was part of the English common law, in contrast to jus sanguinis ('right of blood') associated with the French Civil Code of 1803" by Napoleon; eg, Canada, Mexico, the United States)
is italicized because this is a loan word (from Latin).

Pay attention to section 3 Restricted jus soli about United Kingdom: "Jus soli citizenship was abolished by the British Nationality Act of 1981. * * * Under the current law, if neither parent is British or settled, then a child born in the UK can apply for British citizenship if they have spent the first ten years of their life in the UK [under the Act of 1981]."
(ii) Latin nouns jus, soli, sanguinis are defined in Note (b)(iv)(A).