John Roberts made an earnest, scholarly effort to deal with birthright citizenship, but on this eve of July 4th, he found himself saying some staggering things, at odds with the Declaration of Independence and the regime it brought forth. 🧵 For he proclaimed that “citizenship, then [at the Founding] was the right to have rights.” That is nothing less than a heresy, the inversion of the moral premise of this political order. 2/

Justice Thomas's concurrence in Ellingburg v. United States (Jan 20) is gorgeous. It doesn't counter—but powerfully confirms—the argument I made in Constitutional Illusions & Anchoring Truths on ex post facto laws. Thomas is on the right track...but he doesn't take it all the way. Thread 👇 Thomas rightly sees that for many Founders, the Constitution’s general bar on ex post facto laws wasn't confined to criminal matters. He reads Calder v. Bull that way. In Fletcher v. Peck, John Marshall found the deeper ground—by drawing the Contracts Clause deductively, from the even deeper principle on ex post facto laws. 2/