Justice Jackson’s birthright citizenship opinion cites Clark professor’s work

Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson cited work by History Professor Ousmane Power-Greene in her concurring opinion in Trump v. Barbera, which addressed birthright citizenship.

Chief Justice John Roberts wrote the majority opinion, ruling that the 14th Amendment guarantees automatic citizenship to virtually everyone born on U.S. soil. The decision invalidated President Donald Trump’s executive order that sought to deny citizenship to children born to foreign parents who are unlawfully in the United States.

Jackson, however, used her concurrence to go far beyond that and offer a new understanding of the origins of the 14th Amendment’s guarantee of birthright citizenship and its promise of equal treatment. She did so while emphasizing the singular contributions of Black Americans to that endeavor.

Jackson referenced Power-Greene’s 2014 book, “Against Wind and Tide: The African-American Struggle Against the Colonial Movement,” in her description of the treatment of freed Black people immediately after the Civil War.

“Against Wind and Tide” tells the story of African Americans’ battle against the American Colonization Society (ACS), founded in 1816 with the intention of returning free Black people to its colony, Liberia. Although ACS members considered free Black colonization in Africa a benevolent enterprise, most black leaders rejected the ACS, fearing that the organization sought forced removal. These anticolonizationists did not believe Liberia would ever be a true “black American homeland.”