T H E G L O B A L S TAT E O F C I T I Z E N S H I P D I D YO U K N OW ? Why the US has territorial birthright citizenship home nations in order to strengthen their own statehood. However, universal birthright citizenship was not established in the US until after the Civil War. In the infamous Dred Scott case of 1857, the Supreme Court ruled that no Black person could ever be a US citizen. It took the Fourteenth Amendment of 1868 to establish that ‘[a]ll persons born or naturalised in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.’ Among his first actions as reinstalled president, Donald Trump issued a 20 January 2025 executive order purporting to roll back territorial birthright citizenship in the United States. Most citizenship scholars view this as unconstitutional. While some think that the US is the only country with birthright citizenship, unconditional territorial birthright citizenship is common throughout North and South America. For the US and Canada, this is inherited from English common law going back to the famous Calvin’s case of 1608. Calvin’s Case is ‘the earliest, most influential theoretical articulation by an English court of what came to be the common-law rule that a person’s status was vested at birth and based upon place of birth’. In most of South America, the legacy of ius soli goes back to the Spanish 1812 Cádiz Constitution. Throughout the Americas, territorial birthright served a useful purpose because former colonial territories needed to break immigrants’ links with their See also this Vox.com explainer video about why the US has birthright citizenship. 1.3 TERRITORIAL BIRTHRIGHT CITIZENSHIP AROUND THE WORLD Type of territorial bir thright citizenship principle (excl provisions for foundlings and those who would other wise be stateless) | 191 countries | 2024 Territorial birthright citizenship Unconditional Parental residence or birth restriction Source: GLOBALCIT Citizenship Law Dataset, v3, mode A02 7 Gender or group restriction No provision