Chinese American Legal Defense Alliance, Amicus Curiae
The Chinese American Legal Defense Alliance is a civil rights organization founded in 2021 to protect the rights of Americans of Chinese descent. The following is excerpted from the Amicus Curiae Brief for Respondents as submitted to the U.S. Supreme Court on Feb. 25, 2026. The government claims the mantle of original understanding by citing a number of post-ratification articles that it claims show that “contemporary commentators” understood that the meaning of the citizenship clause excluded “temporarily present aliens.” Most prominently, they rely on two Democratic lawyers, Francis Wharton and Alexander Porter Morse, who were writing about 15 years after…
