The Dignity of Citizenship in Religion and Law

This week, the United States Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in Trump v. Barbara, the case challenging the January 2025 executive order seeking to end birthright citizenship. Birthright citizenship is the right of people who are born in the United States to be citizens of the United States. It is based on the 14th amendment (passed in 1868 after the abolition of slavery) which says that “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.”

The language is plain, but the current administration argues that the clause should be understood according to its original meaning which, it says, should only apply to the children of slaves whose citizenship status had been in question since the Dred Scott decision of 1857. Whether or not that is the correct understanding of the clause’s original meaning, relying on an original meaning means using a 19th century solution to resolve a 21st century social issue and, in the process, ignoring 158 years of practice and understanding.  Perhaps more fundamentally, the President’s assertion of authority to “say what the law is,” – that is, to reinterpret the constitution – tests the boundaries of executive authority that have been settled since 1803.

But our concern is about the protection of human dignity.

The US Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) submitted an amicus brief in support of birthright citizenship which, they said, was “motivated by their firmly held belief that each person is endowed by God with an inherent dignity that confers certain ‘universal, inviolable, and inalienable’ rights,” quoting Pope John XXIII, Pacem in Terris ¶145 (Apr. 11, 1963). While the brief does contain some legal analysis of caselaw and legal history, the thrust of the brief is rooted in the religious view that “Birthright Citizenship Is Consistent With The Church’s Fundamental Teaching Regarding Every Human Person’s Inherent Dignity.”

This blog post does not take a position on the merits of the case, or on the propriety of the Catholic Bishops asking the United States Supreme Court to rule on a constitutional question on religious grounds – which would have significant and far-reaching implications.

Rather, I want to show how closely the religiously-based dignity argument aligns with the secular understanding of dignity that defines and animates modern human rights law. Indeed, everything the Bishops say in their brief is consistent with the secular of global dignity law.

The Bishops’ essential argument is that “The Church teaches that equal human dignity is inherent in the mere fact of personhood and does not depend on citizenship, immigration status, or parentage.” This is precisely lesson from the avowedly secular Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Convention on the Rights of the Child both of which recognize the inherent dignity of “all members of the human family.” (UDHR, Preamble, Art. 1, Art. 15; CRC Preamble, Art. 7). Rights derive from recognition of this inherent dignity, not the other way around, as the International Covenants both say (“Recognizing that these rights derive from the inherent dignity of the human person…”)

For the Bishops, “The Bible calls us to give special care to vulnerable people, including migrants and children, both of whom are affected by this Executive Order,” international law and domestic of most countries does the same thing. You can see this same obligation of the states to take affirmative measures to protect people who are vulnerable throughout dignity case law such as, for instance, in the Joint Concurring Opinion of Judges A.A. Cançado Trindade and A. Abreu-Burelli in the case from the Inter-American Court of Human Rights regarding the rights of street children: “The duty of the State to take positive measures is stressed precisely in relation to the protection of life of vulnerable and defenseless persons, in situation of risk, such as the children in the streets.”

Even the doctrine of subsidiarity, upon which the Bishops rely, is identical to the individuality on which the human rights concept of dignity relies. The Bishops write, quoting the Compendium of the Social Teaching of the Church ¶106 that “’’All of social life is an expression of its unmistakable protagonist: the human person.’ Accordingly, Church teaching demands that social structures be ordered such that human persons and families are not treated as passive objects of governance. Subsidiarity thus safeguards human dignity by ensuring that authority remains oriented toward the person as a social being, rather than subordinating the person to the state.’ Catechism of the Catholic Church ¶1912 (“The common good is always oriented towards the progress of persons.”); Pope Paul VI, Gaudium et Spes ¶26 (Dec. 7, 1965).”

The UDHR – and every international, regional, and national rights instrument since then – places dignity directly within the individual human being, as an empowered agent, the author of their life, the subject (not object) of rights, and the unique holder of their human dignity. This ensures that no ideology, or abstract entity can subordinate inherent human dignity. (This is one way in which the doctrine of dignity repudiates the ideology of naziism, which placed itself above the dignity of the individual).

Moreover, the association of dignity with progress is also deeply embedded in the human rights understanding. The 1945 Charter of the United Nations – the first international doctument to “reaffirm faith in … the dignity and worth of the human person” also commits “to promote social progress and better standards of life in larger freedom.”

Another example is in the holistic way the Bishops describe human dignity – not only as an immanent quality that lives only in the human spirit, but as a practical necessity of life in this world. “The Church acknowledges that leading a ‘life truly human’ requires more than food and clothing—it requires freedom and agency, including ‘the right to choose a state of life freely and to found a family, the right to education, to employment, to a good reputation, to respect, to appropriate information, to activity in accord with the upright norm of one’s own conscience, to protection of privacy and rightful freedom even in matters religious.’ See Pope Paul VI, Gaudium et Spes ¶26.”

There are far too many examples from the secular world of human rights that echo this view to be given here. One general expression is found in the UN Human Rights Committee’s General Comment 36 interpreting Article 6 (“the right to life”) of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (to which the US is a party). This General Comment explains that “States parties should take appropriate measures to address the general conditions in society that may give rise to direct threats to life or prevent individuals from enjoying their right to life with dignity … [which]  include, where necessary, measures designed to ensure access without delay by individuals to essential goods and services such as food, water, shelter, health care, electricity and sanitation, and other measures designed to promote and facilitate adequate general conditions, such as the bolstering of effective emergency health services, emergency response operations (including firefighters, ambulance services and police forces) and social housing programmes.”

Another famous formulation of this idea is from the 1981 Indian Supreme Court case, Francis Coralie Mullin v. The Administrator, Union Territory of India: “The  right to life includes the right to live with human dignity  and all that goes along with it, namely, the bare  necessaries   of life  such as adequate  nutrition, clothing and shelter and facilities for reading, writing and expressing oneself in diverse forms, freely moving about and mixing and commingling with fellow human beings.”

This includes, too, participating as an agent on equal terms with others in the political community. From the Bishops’ brief: “When a person is excluded from the legal and political structures that govern his life, he or she is prevented from exercising agency and participating in community, to his or her detriment and that of the nation.” From the South African Constitutional Court, we get the same idea in what the Court calls “civic dignity”: “The participation by the public on a continuous basis provides vitality to the functioning of representative democracy. It encourages citizens of the country to be actively involved in public affairs, identify themselves with the institutions of government and become familiar with the laws as they are made. It enhances the civic dignity of those who participate by enabling their voices to be heard and taken account of.”

Across the world and in diverse legal and religious traditions, there is a remarkable coherence of understanding about the meaning of dignity, and the legal obligations its recognition imposes on states. In simple terms, the Bishops “urge the Court to reject the Executive Order and uphold the enduring constitutional and moral commitment to equal dignity for all persons born in the United States.”  The Court should take these arguments seriously not because they are grounded in a particular religious doctrine but because the arc of the law should bend toward dignity.