Left-Wing Lawyers Are Trying To Stop Trump On Everything

 

By John J. Duncan Jr.

duncanj@knoxfocus.com

I spent 16 years as a lawyer and a judge before going to Congress and have maintained my law license and have done a very small amount of legal work since leaving Washington.

Thus, I was shocked when over 6,000 law professors and law students signed a petition demanding that Senators Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley be disbarred simply for questioning the results of the 2020 election.

Professor Alan Dershowitz said that Cruz was the best student he ever had at Harvard Law School, and Hawley graduated from both Stanford and Yale Law School.

I graduated from the George Washington University Law School and was taught back then that even the worst criminals had the right to be defended in our courts.

The petition mentioned above showed me that too many of our law schools had become very political, very partisan, and really little more than leftist think tanks.

Now, there are apparently thousands of left-wing lawyers chomping at the bit to sue President Trump, trying to stop everything he is trying to do.

As I write this column, there are three federal judges who are at least temporarily stopping Trump’s executive order to do away with birthright citizenship.

I have been interested in this issue for a long time, and was asked by The Tennessean newspaper to write a column which was published on August 15, 2010 under the title “U.S. Citizenship Is A Privilege.” That column follows here:

I spent 7½ years before coming to Congress as a Criminal Court Judge in Knoxville. Because of this and other experiences, I believe there is a right way to do things and a wrong way.

Thus, I am strongly opposed to illegal immigration and do not believe those who are here illegally should be given the same status and rights as those who are here legally.

This, in part, is why I believe children born to those who are here illegally should be treated as citizens of the countries from which their parents came and not as citizens of the United States.

When I was a judge, I was probably toughest on crimes against children, and I believe children of illegal immigrants should be treated with the greatest of kindness.

But, citizenship in the United States should be regarded as a very great privilege, and it should not be granted lightly to anyone.

I am supporting an effort that is just beginning in Congress to change the birthright citizenship provisions in the 14th Amendment. The 14th Amendment has been changed before. It refers only to voting by men, and this was changed by the 19th Amendment granting women the right to vote.

One of the original purposes of the 14th Amendment was to grant citizenship and count as a whole (instead of just 3/5 as in the original Constitution) those persons who had been slaves. This was right and proper and should have been done long before it was.

Those who imply or say that being tough on illegal immigration is somehow racist are resorting to the sort of scurrilous personal attacks and childish sarcasms that people often use when their case is weak.

It is very difficult to change the Constitution, and it should be. And the odds are very much against changing the birthright citizenship provision.

But the 14th Amendment was not written to deal with anything related to illegal immigration. Our leaders in 1868 could never have envisioned the numbers we have coming here illegally today.

I have heard and read that half the people of the world have to get by on $2.00 or less a day [now it is $4.00]. Some three billion people are hoping for one good meal today and probably will not get it.

We are blessed beyond our comprehension to live in this country, and Americans are by far the most generous people in the world. No other country has even come close to the many millions we have allowed in legally over the course of just the last few years.

But our entire infrastructure – hospitals, schools, jails, roads, sewers, etc. – just could not support the rapid influx of the mega millions who would come here if we simply opened our borders.

While we all sympathize with those billions who are living in terrible poverty around the world, we have to have a legal, orderly system of immigration and it must be enforced.

I saw a television program several years ago which showed pregnant women who had come from Mexico to San Diego just before delivering so they could get free medical care, and so that their children would be U.S. citizens.

Some adults have later used the citizenship of their children as a basis to gain immigration for their families.

The birthright citizenship provision should be changed as a part of the overall reform of our immigration laws.”

This column written in 2010 is even more timely today.