Professor Amar Participates in National Debate on Birthright Citizenship

Professor Vikram Amar debated Chuck Cooper on the topic of birthright citizenship in April at the University of Tennessee-Knoxville.

Amar and Cooper, founding member and chairman of Cooper & Kirk PLLC, addressed the question: “Are persons born in the U.S. to temporarily or illegally present parents U.S. citizens by birthright under the Fourteenth Amendment?”

Amar argued for the affirmative and Cooper for the negative at the debate, presented by the Steamboat Institute and UT-Knoxville's Howard H. Baker School for Public Policy and Public Affairs' Institute of American Civics. The event was part of Steamboat Institute’s Campus Liberty Tour.

Watch a video replay of the debate, starting around the 22-minute mark.

Vikram Amar returned to UC Davis as a distinguished professor of law in 2023 after serving for eight years as dean and Iwan Foundation Professor of Law at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign College of Law. Before that, he was a professor and the senior associate dean for academic affairs at King Hall from 2008 to 2015.