14th Amendment and birthright citizenship [Video]

It may not be as oft-quoted as the First Amendment or as contested as the Second Amendment, but the 14th Amendment to the United States Constitution plays a critical role in supporting some of our closest-held notions of American freedom and equality.For one, it clearly states that American citizenship is a birthright for all people who are born on American soil — something that President Donald Trump has announced he wants to end. Not only would this unravel 150 years of American law, it would loosen a significant cornerstone of the Constitution’s interpretation of American identity.In order to better understand this part of the 14th Amendment, we turned to a pair of experts in constitutional and immigration law: Jeffrey Rosen, president and CEO of the National Constitution Center; and Erika Lee, former director of the Immigration History Research Center at the University of Minnesota.The amendment has five sections, but we …