Speaking for a 6-3 majority in Trump v. CASA, the Supreme Court case involving birthright citizenship, Justice Amy Coney Barrett wrote that while the “executive has a duty to follow the law, the judiciary does not have unbridled authority to enforce this obligation.”

That sentence should strike fear into the heart of every American. And it was the last thing the Framers had in mind when they designed the U.S. Constitution.

If anyone had heard those words when the Constitution was debated, it would have been rejected out of hand. Opponents of the Constitution — and there were many — agreed with Patrick Henry that the proposed new government with its presidential office “squints towards monarchy; and does not this raise indignation in the breast of every true American?”

Barrett’s controversial statement arose from a legal challenge to Executive Order 14160 signed by Donald Trump on Jan. 20. It identified circumstances in which a person born in the United States is not “subject to the jurisdiction thereof” and bluntly stated: “The 14th Amendment has never been interpreted to extend citizenship universally to everyone born within the United States.”

The 14th Amendment came into being as a result of the infamous 1857 Dred Scott v. Sanford decision, a ruling described by Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter as “one of the court’s great self-inflicted wounds.”

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