King Hall Experts Weigh in on Birthright Citizenship Case
Professors Vikram Amar, Gabriel "Jack" Chin and Kevin R. Johnson have been in the media spotlight regarding Trump v. Barbara, the Supreme Court case challenging President Donald Trump’s 2025 executive order aimed at ending birthright citizenship.
In the days leading up to oral arguments on April 1, the New York Times and Wall Street Journal referenced an amicus brief submitted by Amar on behalf of his brother, Yale Law Professor Akhil Reed Amar, backing the American Civil Liberties Union-led challenge to Trump’s order. Amar also spoke to CNN about the case.
“We shouldn’t view this birthright citizenship question in isolation,” Amar told CNN. “We should view it as part of the American experiment and the repudiation of continental ideas of bloodlines and lineage. The whole American experiment is about basing your opportunities and your future on who you are and what you make of your own equality rather than which family and which bloodline you were born into.”
The Amars also have written extensively about birthright citizenship via their “Brothers in Law” series on SCOTUSblog.
Chin spoke to the New York Times for April 2 story highlighting how the past day's oral arguments included references to the landmark 1898 case involving San Francisco’s Wong Kim Ark, as well as lesser-known cases focused on Asian immigrants.
Chin noted that amid the comprehensive anti-Asian immigration policies of the early 20th century, many Asians turned to their communities—including wealthy Chinese merchants who wanted to help their communities and retain access to Chinese labor—to help.
“Because of the economic and political importance of Chinese immigration, high-quality U.S. citizen lawyers were hired to litigate cases large and small,” Chin said.
As Trump sat in court during Trump v. Barbara oral arguments, a majority of justices raised doubts about the constitutionality of his order to end automatic citizenship for children born on U.S. soil – a status long viewed as guaranteed under the 14th Amendment.
“I do not think that Chief Justice (John) Roberts wants to go down in history as presiding over a court that ended birthright citizenship," Johnson told Reuters in its April 2 report on the proceedings.
Johnson also discussed the case on public radio station KPFA’s Hard Knock Radio show and in interviews with The National News Desk and Minnesota Reporter.
Johnson directs UC Davis Law's Aoki Center for Critical Race and Nation Studies, which in February joined a coalition of constitutional, civil rights, and other scholars led by Temple University Professor Evelyn M. Rangel-Medina in filing an amicus brief backing the challenge to Trump's birthright citizenship order.
Vikram Amar holds the Daniel J. Dykstra Endowed Chair at UC Davis School of Law. He 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.
Gabriel "Jack" Chin is a Martin Luther King Jr. Professor of Law and holder of the Edward L. Barrett Jr. Endowed Chair at UC Davis School of Law. He is a prolific and much-cited criminal and immigration law scholar whose work has addressed many of the most pressing social issues of our time.
Kevin R. Johnson is a distinguished professor of law, Mabie-Apallas Professor of Public Interest Law and Martin Luther King Jr. Professor of Law. Johnson is the director of the Aoki Center for Critical Race and Nation Studies and also has an appointment as professor of Chicana/o studies at UC Davis. He served as dean of UC Davis Law from 2008 to 2024.