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32 Am. L. Rev. 554 (1898)
Who are Citizens of the United States - Wong Kim Ark Case - Interpretation of Citizenship Clause of Fourteenth Amendment

handle is hein.journals/amlr32 and id is 564 raw text is: 32 AMERICAN LAW REVIEW. WHO ARE CITIZENS OF THE UNITED STATES? WONG KIM ARK CASE -INTERPRETATION OF CITIZENSHIP CLAUSE OF FOURTEENTH AMEND- MENT. The Wong Kim Ark case, decided by the United States Supreme Court on March 28, 1898,1 decides, for the first time in that tribunal, the question whether a person born in the United States of foreign parents is a citizen of the United States under the citizenship clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. The decision holds, substantially, that the language used in the Four- teenth Amendment to the constitution is declaratory of the common-law doctrine, and not of the international law doctrine, and that, therefore, a person born in the United States is a citizen thereof, irrespective of the nationality or political status of his parents. While the question has arisen before and has been referred to in some of the decisions of the Supreme Court, still it cannot be said to have been directly involved and squarely decided until the present decision in the Wong Kim Ark case. This case settles, once for all, the question of the citizenship of children born within the United States, whose parents are foreign subjects or citizens. While it is the commonly accepted notion, and that generally entertained by the profession, that all persons born within .the United States, whether of foreign parents or not, are citizens, still popular impressions may be common errors, and are not always to be regarded as the safest tests of what the law is. Whatever of doubt and misapprehension exists on the question is because of the existence of two general doc- trines or tests of citizenship by birth; one, the common-law doctrine, which makes birth in a country sufficient to confer citizenship; the other, the doctrine of the law of nations, by which the political status of children is fixed by that of the 1 18 Sup. Ct. Rep. 456; 169 U. S. 649.

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