Calm down about today’s birthright citizenship case, Trump v. Barbara. We were always going to lose. That was expected by anyone who understands how the courts work; what wasn’t expected is that this ruling was such a huge step toward eventual victory. You don’t have to be happy, but you don’t have to freak out. We’re winning.

Here’s the deal. Let me give it to you from the perspective of a politically informed lawyer, because I understand a little about how courts think, having been raised in a house with a mother who was a judge and appearing in courts all the way up to the Ninth Circuit for 30 years. It’s important you understand all the context to see where we are really at. It’s also important that you keep your feelings in check and not freak out like an emotionally incontinent teenage girl who catches her mom reading her diary.

Let’s talk about the 14th Amendment, which establishes birthright citizenship in the view of the very narrow majority. That “very narrow” part is key. For about 150 years, the common legal understanding of the 14th Amendment has been that it provides that, with narrow exceptions (such as the children of ambassadors), anyone born in the United States is an American citizen. And the text of the amendment can be read to support that. Now, you don’t have to like that, and you don’t have to agree with that reading—like most of you, I think the stronger argument is the one against birthright citizenship for children of transients and illegal aliens—but whether you agree or disagree, it’s not so legally ridiculous as to be disconnected from reality. And it was the reality until new scholarship, developed over the last couple of decades, began to seriously challenge it.

Let’s understand how the courts work. They don’t like changing things. They revere precedent. It takes a lot to get a new understanding of the Constitution to become the mainstream interpretation. Look at the Second Amendment. For a century, it was understood to allow........

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