How One Term Reshaped American Law, Identity, and Sovereignty
By Malcolm Lee Kitchen III | MK3 Law Group
(c) 2026 – All rights reserved.
I. Introduction
Some legal questions arrive wrapped in complexity so dense that most people never bother to unwrap them. The word “person” is one of those questions. It sits at the center of nearly every legal dispute, every statute, every constitutional argument in American history, and yet almost no one stops to ask what it actually means, where it came from, or how its meaning changed over time.
This document does exactly that.
Since September 2018, this research has focused on the legal history of the word “person” and its related terms: “persons,” “people,” “individual,” “citizen,” and “resident.” After more than three years of intensive work across multiple legal domains, a coherent timeline has emerged. That timeline explains how a single word, through judicial decisions, constitutional amendments, and legislative expansion, quietly dismantled the foundational architecture of American self-governance.
This is not a fringe argument. Every claim in this analysis is supported by primary legal sources: statutes, Supreme Court opinions, constitutional text, and recognized legal dictionaries. The reader is encouraged to verify each citation independently. The sources are all publicly accessible.
The structure of this analysis is linear and historical. It begins with the original definition of “citizen” and “people” at the founding, traces the introduction of the word “persons” in constitutional and statutory law, examines the birth of federal U.S. citizenship in 1873, and follows the subsequent expansion of the word “person” to include corporations, administrative entities, and legal fictions. It concludes with a practical analysis of what these distinctions mean for individuals navigating the modern legal system.
The goal is not to prescribe politics or morality. It is to provide precise knowledge of a legal framework that affects every person living in the United States, whether they are aware of it or not. Understanding this framework is the first step toward navigating it competently.
II. The Current Situation: What “Person” Means in Modern Law
Open any federal statute and the word “person” appears dozens, sometimes hundreds of times. Courts apply it constantly. Agencies regulate it. Most people assume it simply means a human being. That assumption is incorrect, and the gap between the assumption and the reality is where most legal confusion begins.
Consider the definition in Title 8 of the United States Code, the section governing nationality and immigration. Under 8 USC 1101(b)(3): “The term ‘person’ means an individual or an organization.”
That definition seems simple until you pull on each thread. The term “individual” has no precise statutory definition in that section, which means courts and agencies fall back on standard dictionary interpretations. Black’s Law Dictionary, Fourth Edition, defines “individual” as follows:
“As a noun, this term denotes a single person as distinguished from a group or class, and also, very commonly, a private or natural person as distinguished from a partnership, corporation, or association; but it is said that this restrictive signification is not necessarily inherent in the word, and that it may, in proper cases, include artificial persons.”
Read that carefully. The word “individual,” which most people treat as a synonym for “human being,” explicitly allows for the inclusion of artificial persons in proper cases. A corporation, under certain circumstances, qualifies as an individual.
The word “organization” within the Title 8 definition of “person” is outlined in 8 USC 1101(a)(28): “The term ‘organization’ means, but is not limited to, an organization, corporation, company, partnership, association, trust, foundation or fund; and includes a group of persons, whether or not incorporated, permanently or temporarily associated together with joint action on any subject or subjects.”
This is not abstract. These definitions have direct practical consequences. Organizations qualify as persons under Title 8, which governs nationality and forms the structural basis of the U.S. passport system. A company incorporated in the District of Columbia could potentially qualify as a U.S. citizen under 8 USC 1401(a), obtain an Employer Identification Number or Social Security Number, and apply for a passport through Form DS-11. A business entity domiciled in American Samoa or the Swains Islands might qualify as a non-citizen national under 8 USC 1408, making it eligible for certain passport types.
These are not hypotheticals. Current research teams are testing exactly these possibilities. The results expose significant inconsistencies in how immigration law defines its own subjects.
The Internal Revenue Code tells a similar story. Under 26 USC 7701(a)(1): “The term ‘person’ shall be construed to mean and include an individual, a trust, estate, partnership, association, company or corporation.”
Once again, artificial entities stand alongside individuals in the definition of “person.” The word that most Americans associate with a human being, in federal statutory law, consistently encompasses corporations, trusts, partnerships, associations, and other legal constructions that have never drawn a breath.
This is the current situation. To understand how it came to be, the analysis must go back to the beginning.
III. The Original Definition of “Citizen” and “People”
The starting point is the Naturalization Act of 1790, the first naturalization law enacted by the United States Congress. Section 1 of that Act states: “Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That any alien, being a free white person, who shall have resided within the limits and under the jurisdiction of the United States for the term of two years, may be admitted to become a citizen thereof, on application to any common law court of record, in any one of the states wherein he shall have resided for the term of one year at least, and making proof to the satisfaction of such court, that he is a person of good character, and taking the oath or affirmation prescribed by law, to support the Constitution of the United States.”
The term “resident” in this context applies specifically to aliens during their pre-citizenship period. Residency, in the legal sense, meant something specific: a foreigner or immigrant present within the jurisdiction. This explains why the Act used that term for individuals during their two-year naturalization phase. The modern definition of “alien” under 8 USC 1101(a)(3) confirms this framing: “The term ‘alien’ means any person not a citizen or national of the United States.”
The 1790 Act was subsequently revised, with the Naturalization Act of 1802 serving as the last major update and remaining technically active today. To qualify for citizenship under these Acts, if not born in a State of the Union, the following criteria applied:
The individual must have previously been an alien, meaning a non-citizen or non-national. They must have met the standard of a “free white person.” They must have resided in the United States for five years as an immigrant, with the two-year requirement extended in later Acts, including at least one year in the state of application. They must have demonstrated good moral character and sworn an oath to support the U.S. Constitution. They must have relinquished all other allegiances or citizenships worldwide.
At this point in American legal history, only State citizenship existed. The category “U.S. citizen” or “United States citizen” as a distinct legal status did not emerge until 1873. The naturalization process described in the 1790 and 1802 Acts pertained exclusively to becoming a citizen of a State of the Union.
The definition of “free white person” as used in these Acts appears in Black’s Law Dictionary, Fourth Edition, and extends well beyond skin color into specific ethnic and racial lineages. The definition includes all persons belonging to European races and their descendants, including European Jews with various mixtures of Celtic, Scandinavian, Teutonic, Iberian, Latin, Greek, and Slavic descent. It includes Magyars, Lapps, Finns, Basques, and Albanians. It includes the mixed Latin, Celtic-Iberian, and Moorish inhabitants of Spain and Portugal, the mixed Greek, Latin, Phoenician, and North African inhabitants of Sicily, and the mixed Slav and Tatar inhabitants of South Russia.
The definition explicitly excludes people defined as Caucasian race, Aryan race, or Indo-European races in the broader anthropological sense, and excludes the mixed Indo-European, Dravidian, Semitic, and Mongolian peoples who inhabit Persia. Case law cited in the dictionary confirms that Syrians of Asiatic birth and descent, native-born Filipinos, and natives of India belonging to the Hindu race did not qualify under this standard.
These criteria, combined with the other requirements listed above, formed the precise legal requirements for citizenship at the founding. This citizenship defined the phrase “We the People” as used in the Constitution’s preamble. Residents and immigrants were not considered part of “the People” until citizenship was granted. The term “persons” may or may not have applied to them during the pre-citizenship period, but the legal trajectory clarifies that non-members of “We the People” were excluded from that constitutional category.
IV. The Introduction of the Term “Persons” in Constitutional Text
The term “persons” appears prominently in Article 1, Section 9, Clause 1 of the Constitution, known as the Slave Trade Clause. There, it describes colored persons of African descent, establishing from the Constitution’s original text a clear distinction between “We the People” and “persons” as separate legal categories.
The Supreme Court made this distinction explicit in Dred Scott v. Sandford, 60 US 393 (1857). This case involved a freed slave seeking State citizenship, and the Court’s opinion addressed directly the question of who constituted “the People” under the Constitution.
Chief Justice Roger B. Taney wrote: “The words ‘people of the United States’ and ‘citizens’ are synonymous terms, and mean the same thing. They both describe the political body who, according to our republican institutions, form the sovereignty, and who hold the power and conduct the Government through their representatives. They are what we familiarly call the ‘sovereign people,’ and every citizen is one of this people, and a constituent member of this sovereignty.”
The Court continued: “The question before us is, whether the class of persons described in the plea in abatement compose a portion of this people, and are constituent members of this sovereignty? We think they are not, and that they are not included, and were not intended to be included, under the word ‘citizens’ in the Constitution, and can therefore claim none of the rights and privileges which that instrument provides for and secures to citizens of the United States. On the contrary, they were at that time considered as a subordinate and inferior class of beings, who had been subjugated by the dominant race, and, whether emancipated or not, yet remained subject to their authority, and had no rights or privileges but such as those who held the power and the Government might choose to grant them.”
The Court further noted: “But there are two clauses in the Constitution which point directly and specifically to the negro race as a separate class of persons, and show clearly that they were not regarded as a portion of the people or citizens of the Government then formed.”
These excerpts establish a deliberate and legally precise separation. Individuals not part of “We the People” were designated as “persons” to distinguish them from full State citizens. The word “people” and the word “persons” were not interchangeable at the founding. They referred to distinct legal classes with distinct legal standings.
A thorough reading of Dred Scott reveals that Taney and the other justices conducted extensive research into state and territorial laws tracing back to the English Empire in the early 1700s. It is a matter of historical record that Taney freed his inherited slaves in 1818, decades before the opinion was written. Nearly half the Court owned slaves at the time. Taney’s modern reputation has suffered significant reinterpretation, but his opinion in Dred Scott relied on factual historical analysis of what the law was at the founding, not on personal animus.
V. The Birth of Federal U.S. Citizenship and the Nation of the District of Columbia
The aftermath of the Civil War reshaped American legal structure in ways that most Americans have never fully understood. The pivotal case is The Slaughter-House Cases, 83 US 36 (1873), decided by the U.S. Supreme Court. This series of cases, argued around butcher operations in New Orleans, produced the first major judicial interpretation of the Fourteenth Amendment and effectively established federal “U.S. citizen” as a distinct legal category.
Justice Samuel Freeman Miller, writing for the Court, explained: “The first section of the fourteenth article, to which our attention is more specially invited, opens with a definition of citizenship, not only citizenship of the United States, but citizenship of the States. No such definition was previously found in the Constitution, nor had any attempt been made to define it by act of Congress. It had been the occasion of much discussion in the courts, by the executive departments, and in the public journals. It had been said by eminent judges that no man was a citizen of the United States, except as he was a citizen of one of the States composing the Union. Those, therefore, who had been born and resided always in the District of Columbia or in the Territories, though within the United States, were not citizens.”
Miller’s opinion addressed the specific problem the Fourteenth Amendment was designed to solve: “Then all the negro race who had recently been made freemen, were still, not only not citizens, but were incapable of becoming so by anything short of an amendment to the Constitution. To remove this difficulty primarily, and to establish a clear and comprehensive definition of citizenship which should declare what should constitute citizenship of the United States, and also citizenship of a State, the first clause of the first section was framed.”
The Court’s next statement is critical: “The first observation we have to make on this clause is, that it puts at rest both the questions which we stated to have been the subject of differences of opinion. It declares that persons may be citizens of the United States without regard to their citizenship of a particular State, and it overturns the Dred Scott decision by making all persons born within the United States and subject to its jurisdiction citizens of the United States. That its main purpose was to establish the citizenship of the negro can admit of no doubt.”
Miller then established the distinction that would prove legally consequential: “It is, that the distinction between citizenship of the United States and citizenship of a State is clearly recognized and established. Not only may a man be a citizen of the United States without being a citizen of a State, but an important element is necessary to convert the former into the latter. He must reside within the State to make him a citizen of it, but it is only necessary that he should be born or naturalized in the United States to be a citizen of the Union. It is quite clear, then, that there is a citizenship of the United States, and a citizenship of a State, which are distinct from each other, and which depend upon different characteristics or circumstances in the individual.”
This distinction carries enormous weight. Federal U.S. citizenship and State citizenship are not the same thing. They depend on different criteria, carry different rights, and operate within different legal frameworks.
The California Supreme Court confirmed this reading in Ellen R. Van Valkenburg v. Albert Brown, 43 Cal. 43 (1872), where Chief Justice William T. Wallace wrote: “No white person born within the limits of the United States, and subject to their jurisdiction, or born without those limits, and subsequently naturalized under their laws, owes the status of citizenship to the recent amendments to the Federal Constitution. The history and aim of the Fourteenth Amendment is well known, and the purpose had in view in its adoption well understood. That purpose was to confer the status of citizenship upon a numerous class of persons domiciled within the limits of the United States, who could not be brought within the operation of the naturalization laws because native born, and whose birth, though native, had at the same time left them without the status of citizenship.”
Wallace continued: “These persons were not white persons, but were, in the main, persons of African descent, who had been held in slavery in this country, or, if having themselves never been held in slavery, were the native-born descendants of slaves. Prior to the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment, it was settled that neither slaves, nor those who had been such, nor the descendants of these, though native and free born, were capable of becoming citizens of the United States.”
The legal picture emerging from these cases is precise. Post-1873, Fourteenth Amendment U.S. citizenship was created specifically for freed individuals of African descent. It was a separate category from the State citizenship that comprised “We the People.” The two categories operated in different legal worlds, under different constitutional frameworks, with different protections and different limitations.
VI. The Operational Distinction Between State Citizenship and U.S. Citizenship
To understand this distinction in practice, two additional cases are instructive.
Bradwell v. State, 83 US 130 (1873), decided the day after Slaughter-House on April 15, 1873, involved Myra Bradwell’s claim to a law license in Illinois based on her U.S. citizenship. Justice Miller’s opinion clarified the operational limits of the Fourteenth Amendment’s protections.
The case turned significantly on the distinction between domicile and residence. Black’s Law Dictionary, Fourth Edition, defines “domicile” as: “That place where a man has his true, fixed, and permanent home and principal establishment, and to which whenever he is absent, he has the intention of returning. Not for a mere special or temporary purpose, but with the present intention of making a permanent home, for an unlimited or indefinite period.”
Residence carries a different and considerably weaker legal standing. Vattel’s Law of Nations defines residents in relevant context as: “Residents, as distinguished from citizens, are aliens who are permitted to take up a permanent abode in the country. Being bound to the society by reason of their dwelling in it, they are subject to its laws so long as they remain there, and, being protected by it, they must defend it, although they do not enjoy all the rights of citizens. They have only certain privileges which the law, or custom, gives them.”
This distinction matters enormously. A domiciliary in a State holds a fundamentally different legal position than a resident. State citizenship attaches through domicile. Federal U.S. citizenship attaches through birth or naturalization within federal jurisdiction. The legal consequences of each status diverge significantly in areas ranging from rights to jury participation to constitutional protections.
United States v. Cruikshank, 92 US 542 (1876), addressed the rights of freed Black individuals following a massacre in Louisiana. Chief Justice Morrison Remick Waite confirmed the dual citizenship structure: “We have in our political system a government of the United States and a government of each of the several States. Each one of these governments is distinct from the others, and each has citizens of its own who owe it allegiance, and whose rights, within its jurisdiction, it must protect. The same person may be at the same time a citizen of the United States and a citizen of a State, but his rights of citizenship under one of these governments will be different from those he has under the other.”
Federal jurisdictional statutes reflect this reality. Title 28 USC 1332 governing diversity jurisdiction provides: “The district courts shall have original jurisdiction of all civil actions where the matter in controversy exceeds the sum or value of $75,000, exclusive of interest and costs, and is between citizens of different States.” Article III, Section 2 of the Constitution refers repeatedly to “Citizens of different States” and “Citizens of each State” as distinct constitutional parties. The Eleventh Amendment likewise references “Citizens of another State” as a specific legal category.
These are not archaic historical distinctions. They are embedded in the current constitutional and statutory framework.
VII. The Magna Carta: State Sovereignty and Individual Sovereignty
To fully understand the distinction between State and federal citizenship, it is necessary to examine the source of State sovereignty itself. Justice Miller in Slaughter-House referenced it directly: “The people of this country brought with them to its shores the rights of Englishmen; the rights which had been wrested from English sovereigns at various periods of the nation’s history. One of these fundamental rights was expressed in these words, found in Magna Charta: ‘No freeman shall be taken or imprisoned, or be disseized of his freehold or liberties or free customs, or be outlawed or exiled, or any otherwise destroyed; nor will we pass upon him or condemn him but by lawful judgment of his peers or by the law of the land.’”
The Magna Carta limited the power of the monarchy and extended specific protections to freemen. Those protections traveled with English settlers to the American colonies and ultimately into the structure of the 50 States. Each of the 50 States operates as an independent sovereign entity, distinct from federal territories like the District of Columbia, Guam, Puerto Rico, American Samoa, the U.S. Virgin Islands, and the Northern Mariana Islands.
Taney’s language in Dred Scott about sovereignty is precise: sovereignty resides first in the collective body of citizens, with individual sovereignty flowing from membership in that collective. “We the People” are the sovereign body. Each State citizen is a constituent member of that sovereignty. U.S. citizens under the Fourteenth Amendment are not members of these 50 political bodies in the same way.
This is not merely theoretical. The grand jury system operates directly from this principle. Twenty-three members of the collective sovereign body sit in judgment of their peers within that same body. The right to a grand jury, as a function of collective sovereignty, is not a privilege granted by the federal government. It is an exercise of the sovereign body’s authority over its own members. Non-members of the State sovereign body do not participate in this process in the same way.
Sovereignty in this framework functions like membership in a constitutional body. Full members hold rights that attach to their status as members. Non-members, including those holding only federal U.S. citizenship, access privileges that the governing authority may grant or revoke. This is the operational difference between a right and a privilege in American constitutional law.
VIII. The Expanding of “Persons” to Include Artificial Legal Fictions
By 1873, after Slaughter-House, “persons” in federal law had taken on a specific meaning: non-white individuals who were not members of State sovereign bodies. The Dictionary Act of 1871, codified at 1 USC 1, then expanded that definition further. The Act stated: “the words ‘person’ and ‘whoever’ include corporations, companies, associations, firms, partnerships, societies, and joint stock companies, as well as individuals.”
This expansion was initially limited to federal statutes. But Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad Co., 118 U.S. 394 (1886), extended it further. Before oral argument even began, Chief Justice Waite stated: “The Court does not wish to hear argument on the question whether the provision in the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution which forbids a state to deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws applies to these corporations. We are all of opinion that it does.”
The consequence was significant. The Fourteenth Amendment’s “persons,” originally created to provide a framework for freed individuals of African descent, was extended to corporations. Legal fictions, entities with no physical existence and no capacity for consciousness, became “persons” under the same constitutional amendment that had addressed human emancipation.
This did not affect State citizenship or the legal status of white “people” under the original constitutional framework. The Fourteenth Amendment operated as a separate legal structure, and extending it to corporations added another layer to that separate structure without altering the original framework for State citizens.
IX. The Definition of “Individual” and What It Actually Means
The word “individual” in federal law receives a surprisingly detailed treatment in 1 USC 8: “In determining the meaning of any Act of Congress, or of any ruling, regulation, or interpretation of the various administrative bureaus and agencies of the United States, the words ‘person,’ ‘human being,’ ‘child,’ and ‘individual,’ shall include every infant member of the species homo sapiens who is born alive at any stage of development.”
The statute then defines “born alive” with clinical precision, covering complete expulsion or extraction from the mother at any stage of development, provided the infant breathes, has a beating heart, shows pulsation of the umbilical cord, or demonstrates definite movement of voluntary muscles, regardless of how the birth occurs.
This is notably detailed language for a statute ostensibly about the word “individual.” The specificity points to a contested history around the term and its application.
In 5 USC 552a(2), “individual” means: “a citizen of the United States or an alien lawfully admitted for permanent residence.” Applying the legal definitions developed through this analysis: a citizen of the United States under the Fourteenth Amendment framework, or a foreign national lawfully admitted as a permanent resident, meaning an immigrant.
The tax code’s definition of “person” in 26 USC 7701(a)(1), when read through this lens, translates to: a Fourteenth Amendment citizen, a sole proprietorship, a trust, estate, partnership, association, company, or corporation.
Justice Miller’s discussion of corporate creation in Slaughter-House is instructive here: “That wherever a legislature has the right to accomplish a certain result, and that result is best attained by means of a corporation, it has the right to create such a corporation, and to endow it with the powers necessary to affect the desired and lawful purpose, seems hardly to admit of debate.”
The structural parallel between freed individuals operating under federal oversight and legal fictions created by federal authority is not accidental. Both categories of “persons” exist within a federal framework that is distinct from the State sovereign structure. Title 8 pairs “individual” with “alien” across dozens of statutory provisions, consistently aligning business entities and federal citizens as residents within States rather than as constituent members of State sovereign bodies.
The absence of a clear and precise statutory definition of “individual” in most federal contexts is not an oversight. It is the mechanism by which this framework operates without most people recognizing it.
X. The Administrative State and the Replacement of the Constitutional Republic
By the early twentieth century, a third structure had emerged on top of the original two: the administrative state. Federal agencies began generating regulations that governed virtually every aspect of economic and social life. Those regulations consistently used the word “persons,” presuming Fourteenth Amendment applicability to their subjects.
For State citizens, this framework was technically inapplicable. The administrative apparatus addressed Fourteenth Amendment persons, not State sovereign citizens. But as the distinction between these categories faded from public and legal consciousness, the administrative framework expanded to cover everyone by default.
The Reconstruction period following the Civil War had imposed additional constraints on Southern States seeking re-entry into the Union. Those States were required to adopt certain federal frameworks as conditions of readmission. This accelerated the blurring of the line between State sovereign structures and federal administrative structures.
Individuals born in the District of Columbia or in federal territories received no State citizenship rights unless their parents maintained a specific State domicile. The District of Columbia, Guam, Puerto Rico, American Samoa, the U.S. Virgin Islands, and the Northern Mariana Islands all operate under federal jurisdiction without the same sovereignty structure that applies to the 50 States.
XI. The Presumption Embedded in the System
The legal framework described in this analysis operates through presumption. When an individual claims U.S. citizenship, uses a Social Security Number, holds a federal driver’s license, registers to vote in federal elections, or otherwise engages with federal systems as a “U.S. citizen,” they are operationally confirming their status as a Fourteenth Amendment person.
Black’s Law Dictionary distinguishes “domicile” from “residence” with precision relevant here. Domicile is the true, fixed, permanent home. Residence is a transient place of dwelling. The practical legal difference: a domiciliary in a State is a constituent member of that State’s sovereign body. A resident is functionally an alien, present within the jurisdiction but not a full member of the political body.
When someone operates as a “U.S. citizen” or “resident” of a State rather than as a State-domiciled citizen, the legal framework treats them accordingly. The protections that attach to State sovereignty do not apply. Instead, the framework extends the privileges available under the Fourteenth Amendment framework, which are a different and more limited set of legal protections.
This is the core of the presumption: the system defaults to treating individuals as Fourteenth Amendment persons unless they affirmatively and correctly assert State citizenship. Most people never make that assertion because most people do not know the distinction exists.
XII. The Incorporation Doctrine and Its Consequences
The Incorporation Doctrine represents the process by which elements of the Bill of Rights were applied to the States through the Fourteenth Amendment’s Due Process Clause. Before the Fourteenth Amendment, the Bill of Rights bound only federal action, as confirmed in Barron v. City of Baltimore (1833). After the Fourteenth Amendment, the Supreme Court selectively incorporated most provisions of the Bill of Rights against State action.
The breakdown of what was and was not incorporated is instructive:
The First Amendment was fully incorporated across all its provisions. Establishment Clause through Everson v. Board of Education (1947). Free Exercise through Hamilton v. Regents (1934) and Cantwell v. Connecticut (1940). Freedom of Speech through Gitlow v. New York (1925). Freedom of the Press through Near v. Minnesota (1931). Assembly and Petition through DeJonge v. Oregon (1937). Freedom of Association through Roberts v. United States Jaycees (1984).
The Second Amendment was fully incorporated through McDonald v. Chicago (2010).
The Third Amendment has not been incorporated.
The Fourth Amendment was fully incorporated. Search and seizure through Mapp v. Ohio (1961). Warrant requirements through Aguilar v. Texas (1964).
The Fifth Amendment was partially incorporated. The Grand Jury Clause was not incorporated, as established in Hurtado v. California (1884). Double jeopardy was incorporated through Benton v. Maryland (1969). Self-incrimination was incorporated through Malloy v. Hogan (1964). Takings Clause was incorporated through Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad Co. v. City of Chicago (1897).
The Sixth Amendment was partially incorporated. Speedy trial through Klopfer v. North Carolina (1967). Public trial through In re Oliver (1948). Impartial jury through Parker v. Gladden (1966). Notice through In re Oliver (1948). Confronting witnesses through Pointer v. Texas (1965) and Washington v. Texas (1967). Right to counsel through Gideon v. Wainwright (1963). Jury locale was not incorporated.
The Seventh Amendment has not been incorporated.
The Eighth Amendment was fully incorporated. Bail through Schilb v. Kuebel (1971). Fines through Timbs v. Indiana (2019). Cruel and unusual punishment through Robinson v. California (1962).
The Ninth and Tenth Amendments have never been incorporated.
Twining v. New Jersey, 211 US 78 (1908), outlined what the Court identified as national privileges and immunities for U.S. citizens: passage between States, the right to petition, the right to vote in federal elections, access to public lands, protection in federal custody, and the right to inform federal authorities of violations of federal law. The Court confirmed exclusions including: the right to a civil jury, the right to bear arms against state interference, the right to a grand jury, and the right of confrontation.
The incorporated elements represent privileges, not rights in the constitutional sense attached to State sovereignty. United States v. Valentine, 288 F. Supp. 957 (1968), confirms: “The only absolute and unqualified right of citizenship is to residence within the territorial boundaries of the United States; a citizen cannot be either deported or denied reentry.”
This is the full extent of the absolute, unconditional right available to a U.S. citizen: the right to be physically present within the territorial United States. Everything else is a privilege subject to the conditions the federal framework imposes.
XIII. The Fourteenth Amendment and Its Legal Classification Consequences
Legal actions in American courts follow a basic structure: duty, breach, damages. A viable cause of action requires establishing all three. This structure applies differently depending on which legal framework the claimant occupies.
When an individual invokes rights derived from the Fourteenth Amendment, including claims under 42 U.S. Code Chapter 21 (Civil Rights), they are operating within the Fourteenth Amendment’s legal framework. Section 42 USC 1981(a) states: “All persons within the jurisdiction of the United States shall have the same right in every State and Territory to make and enforce contracts, to sue, be parties, give evidence, and to the full and equal benefit of all laws and proceedings for the security of persons and property as is enjoyed by white citizens, and shall be subject to like punishment, pains, penalties, taxes, licenses, and exactions of every kind, and to no other.”
Note the language carefully. The statute grants rights “as enjoyed by white citizens.” This language confirms that the statute addresses persons who are not automatically entitled to those rights, granting them parity with a class that does hold them automatically.
Section 42 USC 1982 states: “All citizens of the United States shall have the same right, in every State and Territory, as is enjoyed by white citizens thereof to inherit, purchase, lease, sell, hold, and convey real and personal property.”
Sections 1983 and 1985, which attorneys commonly invoke for police misconduct and civil rights violations, derive from this same statutory framework. Using these provisions places the claimant within the Fourteenth Amendment framework as a matter of legal structure.
For individuals who hold State citizenship and wish to bring legal claims without invoking the Fourteenth Amendment framework, alternative approaches exist. State constitutional provisions and the original Bill of Rights as applied to State citizens provide a separate basis for claims. Alternatively, operating through a sole proprietorship as plaintiff, with the State citizen acting as attorney-in-fact or next friend, maintains the structural separation.
Federal criminal law is relevant here. Title 18 USC 911 makes it a federal crime, punishable by up to three years imprisonment, to falsely claim U.S. citizenship. Navigating this landscape requires precision.
XIV. Qualified Immunity: The System’s Self-Protection Mechanism
Qualified immunity protects government officials, including law enforcement, from civil liability unless their conduct violated clearly established statutory or constitutional rights of which a reasonable person would have known. The doctrine originated in 42 USC 1983 (enacted 1871) and developed through Supreme Court decisions over several decades.
The key cases in the doctrine’s development: Pierson v. Ray (1967) introduced a good-faith defense for officers making arrests under believed-valid laws. Harlow v. Fitzgerald (1982) established an objective standard, asking what a reasonable officer would have known rather than examining the officer’s subjective good faith. Anderson v. Creighton (1987) required that the violated right be established with specificity rather than at a high level of generality. Saucier v. Katz (2001) created a mandatory two-step analytical test, later made discretionary in Pearson v. Callahan (2009). Mullenix v. Luna (2015) raised the bar for overcoming qualified immunity significantly.
Pierson v. Ray, 386 US 547 (1967), the foundational case, arose from the 1961 arrest of white and Black clergymen at a segregated bus terminal in Jackson, Mississippi. They entered a “White Waiting Room Only” section peacefully, anticipating arrest as a protest against segregation. Officers arrested them amid alleged crowd unrest, though no specific threats were documented against the clergymen themselves.
The Supreme Court granted judicial immunity to the judge who convicted them and extended qualified immunity to the officers who made good-faith arrests under a law they believed to be constitutional. That law was subsequently invalidated. The entire doctrine of modern qualified immunity rests on this foundation: a case arising from civil rights enforcement against peaceful protesters in a segregated Southern city.
The systemic dimension of this is significant. Qualified immunity operates within the Fourteenth Amendment framework, protecting officials who enforce regulations against persons within that framework. The doctrine emerged from racial enforcement contexts and has expanded to cover nearly all government action. Challenges to qualified immunity are structurally difficult because the doctrine was not created by Congress but by the Supreme Court, and Congress has not legislated to remove it despite ongoing criticism.
XV. The Grand Jury and the Destruction of Due Process
The grand jury represents one of the clearest operational distinctions between State citizenship and Fourteenth Amendment citizenship. Under the original constitutional structure, no government could bring charges against a member of the sovereign body without the approval of a grand jury drawn from that same sovereign body. Twenty-three peers of the accused would review the evidence and determine whether the government had sufficient basis to proceed.
Hurtado v. California, 110 US 516 (1884), addressed whether the Fourteenth Amendment’s Due Process Clause required grand jury indictment in State criminal proceedings. The Court held that it did not. The “information” procedure, in which a prosecutor files charges without grand jury review, satisfied due process for Fourteenth Amendment persons.
Walker v. Sauvinet, 92 US 90 (1876), established earlier that trial by jury in civil suits pending in State courts was not a privilege or immunity of national citizenship. The Court’s language was direct: “Due process of law is process according to the law of the land. This process in the States is regulated by the law of State.”
The consequence of these holdings is that U.S. citizens in the Fourteenth Amendment framework do not hold the grand jury right as an incorporated protection. They can be charged by information, meaning a single prosecutor’s decision, without review by a body of their peers. State citizens, operating within the sovereign body framework, can challenge the use of information-based charges through motions addressing the court’s jurisdiction over them in that capacity.
XVI. The Ninth and Tenth Amendments: The Unincorporated Foundation of State Sovereignty
The Ninth and Tenth Amendments are the only provisions of the Bill of Rights that have never been incorporated against the States through the Fourteenth Amendment. For State citizens who have not voluntarily entered the Fourteenth Amendment framework, these amendments represent the foundational legal basis for a range of rights that federal law does not reach.
The Ninth Amendment states: “The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.”
The Tenth Amendment states: “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”
Read together, these amendments establish that the rights of State citizens are not limited to the enumerated rights in the Constitution, and that powers not specifically granted to the federal government remain with the States and with the people. For a domiciled State citizen who is not operating within the Fourteenth Amendment framework, this is the legal basis for challenging federal and State regulations that address conduct causing no harm to another party.
Regulatory schemes governing possession of various items, professional licensing requirements that impose barriers without demonstrable public safety justification, and similar administrative regulations rest on legislative grants of power that may not extend to State citizens operating outside the Fourteenth Amendment framework. The analysis requires careful legal work and is specific to the facts of each situation.
The right to travel, as a foundational right of State citizenship and national citizenship alike, exists within this framework. The right to engage in lawful commerce, to practice professions without compelled licensing, and to conduct one’s affairs without government interference where no injury to another exists, all find their legal basis in the Ninth and Tenth Amendments as applied to State sovereign citizens.
XVII. Two Classes of Citizen, Two Distinct Constitutional Frameworks
The existence of two citizenship classes implies two distinct constitutional frameworks. The original Constitution and Bill of Rights operate as the governing document for State sovereign citizens. The Fourteenth Amendment and the statutory framework built on it operate as the governing document for federal U.S. citizens.
Miller confirmed this in Slaughter-House: “The existence of laws in the States where the newly emancipated negroes resided, which discriminated with gross injustice and hardship against them as a class, was the evil to be remedied by this clause, and by it such laws are forbidden. We doubt very much whether any action of a State not directed by way of discrimination against the negroes as a class, or on account of their race, will ever be held to come within the purview of this provision. It is so clearly a provision for that race and that emergency, that a strong case would be necessary for its application to any other.”
Miller further stated, regarding protections for State citizens: “It is only the former [U.S. citizen privileges] which are placed by this clause under the protection of the Federal Constitution, and that the latter [State citizen rights] are not intended to have any additional protection by this paragraph of the amendment.”
State citizen rights rest where they have always rested: in the State constitutions and in the original federal Constitution as applied through State citizenship. The Fourteenth Amendment neither adds to nor subtracts from those rights. It created a parallel framework for a new class of citizens. That parallel framework has since expanded to cover corporations, administrative entities, and effectively all people who operate within the federal system without asserting State citizenship.
The concept of “constitution” in this context follows the definition provided in Fairhope Single Tax Corporation v. Melville: an organic law establishing the fundamental principles of government for a political body. Two citizenships mean two organic law frameworks. Operating in one framework rather than the other is a legal choice, whether made consciously or by default.
XVIII. Practical Navigation of the Legal Framework
Understanding this framework creates a set of practical questions. How does someone operating in modern American society navigate systems that presume Fourteenth Amendment status without unnecessarily creating legal liability?
The first principle is avoiding false claims of U.S. citizenship, which carries criminal penalties under 18 USC 911. Operating as a State citizen does not require affirmatively claiming U.S. citizenship, nor does it require affirmatively renouncing it in contexts where that claim has legal significance.
The second principle involves the use of legal entities. A sole proprietorship, properly established, can engage with federal systems including banking, contracting, and tax compliance without requiring the sole proprietor to operate in a personal capacity as a Fourteenth Amendment person. The entity acts as the interface with the federal framework while the individual maintains a distinct legal position.
The third principle involves record keeping and public documentation. Establishing State citizenship through domicile, documented properly and consistently, creates the evidentiary record necessary to assert that status in legal proceedings. Courts that encounter properly documented assertions of State citizenship are required to address the jurisdictional questions those assertions raise.
For naturalized citizens and foreign nationals, the Naturalization Act of 1802 remains technically active law. Its requirements include five years of residence in the United States, with at least one year in the State of application, demonstrated good moral character, and an oath to support the Constitution. The process historically required a common law court of record, and the current availability of such courts varies by State. Independent research through primary sources and State-specific legal history is necessary.
The Naturalization Acts of 1790, 1795, 1798, and 1802 form the complete legislative sequence. The 1802 Act is the operative version for most purposes. Its requirements, applied to current circumstances, provide a workable framework for those seeking to establish State citizenship through naturalization rather than birth.
XIX. The Research Methodology and How to Verify These Claims
Every claim in this analysis is verifiable through primary sources. The reader is strongly encouraged to engage with those sources directly rather than relying on secondary summaries, which consistently introduce errors of interpretation and emphasis.
Google Scholar provides free access to Supreme Court decisions. Searches for key cases, Dred Scott v. Sandford, Slaughter-House Cases, Bradwell v. State, United States v. Cruikshank, Downes v. Bidwell, Hurtado v. California, and Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad, return the full text of the opinions. Reading those opinions in full, rather than excerpted quotations, provides the context necessary to evaluate the analysis presented here.
Black’s Law Dictionary, Fourth Edition, is the appropriate reference for historical legal definitions. Later editions, particularly those published after the 1970s, reflect subsequent legal shifts that may not accurately capture the historical meaning of terms. The Fourth Edition reflects the legal understanding of terms as they were applied through the period covered by this analysis.
The United States Code is publicly accessible through the Cornell Legal Information Institute and through the official government website at uscode.house.gov. Statutes cited in this analysis are current law and can be verified through either resource.
State court decisions referenced, including Ellen R. Van Valkenburg v. Albert Brown from the California Supreme Court, are accessible through state judicial records and legal research databases.
The methodology throughout this analysis has been to present primary sources directly, quote them accurately, and draw logical conclusions from their content. Where conclusions go beyond what the cited sources directly state, that distinction is relevant to the reader’s evaluation.
XX. Conclusion: What This Analysis Establishes
The word “person” in American law is not what most people assume it to be. It is a legal category with a specific and traceable history. That history begins with a constitutional framework that distinguished sharply between “We the People” as State sovereign citizens and “persons” as individuals outside that sovereign body.
The Fourteenth Amendment created a third category, federal U.S. citizens, originally designed to address the legal status of freed individuals of African descent following emancipation. Through subsequent judicial decisions, legislative expansion via the Dictionary Act and Santa Clara County, and the growth of the administrative state, the Fourteenth Amendment framework expanded to cover corporations, administrative entities, and effectively all individuals who engage with federal systems without asserting State citizenship.
The result is a legal system that operates through presumption. It presumes Fourteenth Amendment status for anyone who uses federal identification, claims U.S. citizenship, or engages with administrative systems without asserting an alternative legal status. Within that presumed status, individuals hold privileges, not rights in the constitutional sense attached to State sovereignty. Those privileges are subject to the conditions of the framework that grants them.
State citizenship, for those born within one of the 50 States or lawfully naturalized, remains a viable legal status under the original constitutional framework. It carries access to the Ninth and Tenth Amendments as unincorporated protections, to grand jury indictment as due process, and to the full protections of State constitutions and the original Bill of Rights. It does not carry the administrative privileges of federal U.S. citizenship.
Navigating between these frameworks requires precision, documentation, and a clear understanding of which legal structure applies to any given interaction with government. The first step in that navigation is understanding that the two frameworks exist, that they operate differently, and that most people have defaulted into one without ever choosing it.
That is what this analysis establishes. The next steps belong to the reader.
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