Keith Whittington to Present Constitution Day Address at W&L The David Boies Professor of Law at Yale University Law School will speak on Sept. 18 in Northen Auditorium.

By Brian Laubscher
September 4, 2025

Keith Whittington, David Boies Professor of Law at Yale University Law School, will deliver this year’s Constitution Day address at Washington and Lee University at 5 p.m. on Sept. 18 in Northen Auditorium. His lecture, titled “By Birth Alone: The Original Meaning of Birthright Citizenship in the Fourteenth Amendment,” is free and open to the public.

Whittington’s address is based on his recent paper published under the same title, where he explores the original meaning of the 14th Amendment’s citizenship clause. In his paper, Whittington argues that the traditional interpretation of birthright citizenship remains correct and that recent challenges lack a solid foundation. He concludes that children born on American soil to alien parents, including unauthorized immigrants, are American citizens with only a few random exceptions.

“The citizenship clause of the 14th Amendment entrenched birthright citizenship into the Constitution. Building on a recent revisionist scholarly literature, President Donald Trump’s executive orders have asserted that the scope of birthright citizenship should be understood to exclude children born on American soil to parents who are unauthorized to be in the country or authorized to be in the country for only a limited purpose and period,” said Whittington. “This asserted limitation of birthright citizenship is at odds with the original meaning of the 14th Amendment and the antecedent common-law rule of nativity that the language of the 14th Amendment embodied and declared.”

“Professor Whittington’s lecture will help the W&L community think through the question of who belongs in the United States, which not only affects policies regarding immigration and the vote, but also informs what it means to be an American,” said Lucas Morel, John K. Boardman Jr. Professor of Politics at W&L. “I can think of no better subject to reflect upon as we commemorate Constitution Day and Citizenship Day.”

Whittington is a recognized authority on constitutional theory, American political and constitutional history, judicial politics, the presidency and free speech and the law. In addition to his role as professor of law, he also holds a secondary appointment at Yale as professor of political science. Whittington spent most of his career as the William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Politics at Princeton University and has also held visiting appointments at Georgetown University Law Center, Harvard Law School and the University of Texas School of Law.

He is the author or co-author of several books, including “You Can’t Teach That!: The Battle Over University Classrooms,” “Repugnant Laws: Judicial Review of Acts of Congress from the Founding to the Present,” “Speak Freely: Why Universities Must Defend Free Speech,” “Constitutional Interpretation: Textual Meaning, Original Intent, and Judicial Review,” and “Political Foundations of Judicial Supremacy: The Presidency, the Supreme Court, and Constitutional Leadership in U.S. History.” His work has appeared in The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times, among others, and he hosts “The Academic Freedom Podcast.”

Whittington serves as founding chair of the Academic Freedom Alliance’s Academic Committee and as a Hoover Institution visiting fellow. He has also been a John M. Olin Foundation faculty fellow, an American Council of Learned Societies junior faculty fellow, a National Center for Free Speech and Civic Engagement Fellow and a visiting scholar at the Social Philosophy and Policy Center at Bowling Green State University. He is a member of the American Academy of the Arts and Sciences and has served on the Presidential Commission on the Supreme Court of the United States.

Whittington earned a Bachelor of Arts and Bachelor of Business Administration from the University of Texas at Austin, as well as a Master of Arts and Ph.D. in political science from Yale.

Constitution Day commemorates the formation and signing of the U.S. Constitution and is observed on Sept. 17, the day the U.S. Constitutional Convention signed the Constitution in 1787. The federal observance also recognizes those who have become U.S. citizens.