Justice Jackson's 'Call of Remembrance'
On July 4, I will recite Justice Jackson's birthright citizenship opinion in an All Rise News live-stream. Here's why.
When launching All Rise News a little more than a year ago, I was glad to have landed on a logo with the U.S. revolutionary symbolism infused with the colors of the flag and the 13 stars of the colonies.
With a mission statement proclaiming a “radical” intention, the imagery evoked the patriotism of those like Yippie activist Abbie Hoffman reclaiming a Constitution that was peacefully subversive to those in power. This publication is celebrating the nation’s 250th anniversary wholeheartedly, but not with the leader-aggrandizing kitsch of the Great American State Fair in Washington, D.C.
Instead, on Saturday, I’ll be reading Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson’s concurring opinion in Trump v. Barbara, the birthright citizenship case. In affirming the Citizenship Clause’s meaning, history and significance, Jackson foregrounds the “anticaste, antisubordination” vision of the “Second Founding,” the suite of Reconstruction-era constitutional amendments aiming to transform the United States to the “universalist vision” expressed in the Declaration of Independence.
Click here for a link to the live reading on Sat., July 4 at 12:30 p.m. Eastern Time.
From family separation to birthright citizenship
During Donald Trump’s first term, a federal court released more than 900 pages of sworn declarations related to the callous and brutal policy of family separations right before July 4, 2018. I remember reading the wrenching testimonies by families, advocates and others affected by this policy and being moved to share synopses of nearly every declaration over that holiday weekend.
In the first declaration of the tranche, the legal coordinator of a Texas nonprofit who witnessed the cruel policy voiced the sentiments of much of the nation in his declaration: “I simply cannot believe that my government could have done this to these people.”
For me, calling as much attention as I could to those court records was a way to mark the holiday: a reminder of how far the country was straying from its ideals. There were three documents containing tranches of testimonies. I spent three days summarizing the declarations document by document. It felt like an offering to the July 4th holiday and appropriate to its commemoration.
The Supreme Court’s final ruling of its term also carries heavy weight and tension, forcing the United States to reckon with its fundamental character. Globally, birthright citizenship is uncommon, granted automatically in only 33 countries, and the ranks of these nations came shockingly close to losing the world’s superpower. That the ruling fell days before the U.S. quarter-millennial celebration provides an opportunity to engage with the ideas and history that shaped that choice and reflect on how a concept so fundamental to the country’s national identity came so close to being discarded.
I decided to read Justice Jackson’s opinion out of the same compulsion that made me share those family separation declarations nearly a decade ago. I felt that the country witnessed something alarming, and I needed to recount it in its full breadth.
‘The distortion of historical facts’
In practicing reciting it, I found that Justice Jackson’s concurrence takes less than half an hour to complete, leaving out the copious footnotes and citations in the 20-page opinion.
Every time I read it, aloud or not, a new line educates or moves me. The litigation over birthright citizenship forced many of us to learn more about the origins of what is often taken for granted. Most U.S. families, at some point, owed their lives here to birthright citizenship. Mine did, fleeing Eastern Europe generations ago. That bloodline didn’t determine U.S. citizenship seemed, to quote the Declaration of Independence, self-evident. The proposition didn’t seem to require investigation, let alone a defense. Then, it did.
Take this as comfort from the narrow margin of Trump v. Barbara: There is now a 194-page record litigating the genesis of U.S. birthright citizenship, how it was lost in the Dred Scott decision, and how those who transformed the nation through the Reconstruction-era amendments known as the “Second Founding” turned to its universalist lessons to “rebuild a shattered empire.”
Originally, I considered also reading the majority opinion of Chief Justice John Roberts, which is powerful and provides a broader sweep of birthright citizenship’s origins in English common law. Where both opinions have inspiring passages and historical fluency, Jackson’s focuses more intensely on the period where the U.S. betrayed and fought to recapture its ideals — and shows appropriate outrage about the “distortion” of history to strip a “caste” of people of rights. Roberts lets the historical record rebuke the dissenters. Jackson takes them to task for their “myopic” treatment of it for “misbegotten” aims.
“Americans have come to learn that fading memories are not the only danger,” Jackson writes. “The distortion of historical facts—retellings that reimagine and repurpose past events to lend credence to misbegotten aims—may be an even greater threat.”
That observation inspires me as a journalist, as a reminder of the obligation of the profession. Justice Jackson pays tribute in her ruling to those she calls “the keepers of ‘the call of remembrance’ (trained historians).”
The first draft of history also requires care and vigilance.
If your July 4th weekend schedule allows, read the opinions and dissents here. Jackson’s opinion begins on page 32 of the PDF.
Subscribe to All Rise News to receive an alert when the live reading begins.
Adam, as a retired lawyer who clerked long ago for a judge in the US District Court for the Southern District of Ohio I am awed by your grasp of the law and your reporting of complex issues so clearly. YOU are America! WE are America! Heartfelt thanks for helping us to pledge our sacred honor for our country!
Happy 4th, Adam. Even Scots-Irish southerners are immigrants, and when we cease to remember our origins and get “above our rearing,” as we say down here, we lose our souls. Thank you for being an outspoken reporter of the fight for justice in our democracy.