United States v. Wong Kim Ark

United States v. Wong Kim Ark
Supreme Court of the United States
Argued March 5, 8, 1897 Decided March 28, 1898
Full case name	United States v. Wong Kim Ark
Citations	169 U.S. 649 (more) 18 S.Ct. 456; 42 L.Ed. 890
Prior history	Appeal from the District Court of the United States for the Northern District of California; 71 F. 382
Holding
Children born in the United States of foreigners permanently domiciled and resident in the U.S. at the time of birth automatically acquire U.S. citizenship via the Citizenship Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.
Court membership
Case opinions
Majority	Gray, joined by Brewer, Brown, Shiras, White, Peckham
Dissent	Fuller, joined by Harlan
McKenna took no part in the consideration or decision of the case.
Laws applied
U.S. Const. amend. XIV

United States v. Wong Kim Ark, 169 U.S. 649 (1898), is a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court ruled that a child born in the United States of Chinese citizens, who had at the time a permanent domicile and residence in the United States and who were carrying on business there other than for the Chinese government, automatically became a U.S. citizen. This decision established an important precedent in its interpretation of the Citizenship Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution.

Chinese-American cook Wong Kim Ark, who was born in San Francisco in 1873 to Chinese parents legally domiciled and resident there at the time, had been denied re-entry to the United States after a trip abroad, under a law restricting Chinese immigration and prohibiting immigrants from China from becoming naturalized U.S. citizens. He challenged the government's refusal to recognize his citizenship, and the Supreme Court ruled in his favor, holding that the citizenship language in the Fourteenth Amendment encompassed the specific circumstances of his birth, which included that he was the child of foreigners permanently domiciled and resident in the U.S. at the time of birth.

The case highlighted disagreements over the precise meaning of one phrase in the Citizenship Clause—namely, the provision that a person born in the United States who is subject to the jurisdiction thereof acquires automatic citizenship. The Supreme Court's majority concluded that this phrase referred to being required to obey U.S. law; on this basis, they interpreted the language of the Fourteenth Amendment in a way that granted U.S. citizenship to at least some children born of foreigners because they were born on American soil (a concept known as jus soli). The court's dissenters argued that being subject to the jurisdiction of the United States meant not being subject to any foreign power—that is, not being claimed as a citizen by another country via jus sanguinis (inheriting citizenship from a parent)—an interpretation which, in the minority's view, would have excluded "the children of foreigners, happening to be born to them while passing through the country". In the words of a 2007 legal analysis of events following the Wong Kim Ark decision, "The parameters of the jus soli principle, as stated by the court in Wong Kim Ark, have never been seriously questioned by the Supreme Court, and have been accepted as dogma by lower courts."