Mike Ramsey, for whom I have a great deal of respect and who wrote the leading originalist case for birthright citizenship, has a post criticizing not the substance but the tone of critics of Wurman and Barnett. Including me. https://originalismblog.typepad.com/the-originalism-blog/2025/03/adam-cox-et-al-on-birthright-citizenshipmichael-ramsey.html
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But secondly, policy has *actual effects on human beings’ lives*, and providing rhetorical support for an irresponsible and dangerous policy is itself irresponsible and dangerous.
Some call it “gaslighting” or “victim-blaming” but it’s a far more regular & predictable pattern: DARVO
To say that historical argument is one of several valid methods is not to validate that belief!
Buddy this is NOT THE TIME to be fighting this particular fight???
"(whatever that invective is supposed to mean in this context)"
Just a bizarrely obviously wrong claim.
This is basic stuff!
You should have described the arguments as "mind-fuckingly stupid" and "bat-shit crazy."
But sometimes there’s a wolf
I wonder why.
Ilan was a “visiting scholar” in Hungary in 2021 (!) and aligned himself with this movement to make Trump the autocratic ruler of an illiberal sham democracy for that reason.
I myself give them enough credit for their intelligence and autonomy that I think they should own the bad faith and distorted law / history that makes up their piece.
I think "irresponsible" and "cavalier" might distract from refuting their arguments, because those 2 words may convey that they wrote in bad faith
better to focus on meaning in their texts and the world "in front of" their texts imo
Or, as I see it, playing Calvinball by the rules.
1) You’re wrong about these two being “careful scholars of the fourteenth amendment”
2) You’re right, in which case they’re being consciously dishonest in advancing their anti-birthright citizenship argument.
It can’t be that both 1&2 are false.
I think it’s possible that they are generally careful scholars who are here being reckless rather than consciously dishonest. But from my standpoint? The moral distinction re intent isn’t substantial.
https://www.cnn.com/2021/03/10/us/comfort-women-ramseyer-article-trnd/index.html?cid=ios_app
— ZZ Packer
Uh it means the policy consequences of Wurman's work in the context of MAGA is concentration camps.
Because he’s the author of one of the most thorough refutations of anti-birthright citizenship arguments in print. https://www.law.georgetown.edu/georgetown-law-journal/wp-content/uploads/sites/26/2021/01/Ramsey_Originalism-and-Birthright-Citizenship.pdf
Because this, for example, is not fraud. It’s one of the best articles ever written about abolitionist constitutional theory. He knows and has done better. https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/70374246.pdf