A Belated and Possibly Needless Examination of an Amicus Brief

Recently, the Supreme Court decided the case Trump v. CASA. This is a case that was about birthright citizenship without actually being about birthright citizenship. Essentially, after Trump's executive order declaring that children born in the United States of illegal or temporary immigrants are not entitled to automatic citizenship of the United States, various people or organizations or even states sued over it, and various universal injunctions were granted (a universal injunction is a ruling stating that the law in question could not be enforced not only against the parties involved, but everyone). Universal injunctions have been controversial given it effectively allows one judge to block a law for the entire country, and the case that went to the Supreme Court was about whether lower courts could grant such universal injunctions. 

This post is not about that, however, but the underlying birthright citizenship issue. For those curious on the question of universal injunctions, though, I would say I am inclined towards the decision the Supreme Court gave (which was not quite a strict "no" but certainly curtailed the practice). However, the question of the constitutionality of the Executive Order was not ruled upon by the Court in that case, though most likely it will at some point in the future.

For a recap on that issue: The Citizenship Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment declares "All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside." In the case United States v. Wong Kim Ark, a question came about whether a man born in the United States to non-American-citizen Chinese was a citizen of the United States under this, and they ruled he was. Some have asserted that this decision only applies to children of lawful permanent residents, however, hence the recent Executive Order that declared children of illegal or temporary immigrants were not citizens under this (a few go even farther and claim that the decision was outright wrong and children of non-citizens, even if they are permanent legal immigrants, do not gain citizenship under the Citizenship Clause--but the Executive Order did not go that far).

This more limited idea of birthright citizenship has been criticized by various legal scholars of both conservative and liberal persuasions, who say that the Fourteenth Amendment grants citizenship to everyone born in the United States outside of children of Native Americans, those with diplomatic immunity, or foreign occupying armies. Some articles arguing this can be found here, here, and here. I myself have written some past posts on the subject here and here.

As Trump v. Casa was ultimately not about birthright citizenship, the decision didn't really touch on that at all. However, some of the amicus briefs did. An amicus brief, if you are unaware, are filings in a court case by people other than the parties involved. They are common in Supreme Court cases where a group or individual wants to make an argument to the court without being the plaintiff/prosecutor or respondent/defendant. SCOTUSBlog is a convenient place to find amicus briefs for a case; if you go to their page on the case and scroll down, you can find them all listed. In the case of Trump v. CASA, the amicus briefs for the case can be found conveniently here.

As noted, most of the amicus briefs were about the question presented in the case, that of the universal injunctions. However some filed amicus briefs either partially or entirely treating on the question of birthright citizenship, arguing for or against the constitutionality of the executive order. So, for example, the Scholars of Constitutional Law of Immigration filed one arguing the executive order was unconstitutional, and the Claremont Institute's Center for Constitutional Jurispudence filed one arguing it was (there were others who filed on either side, I'm just giving examples). It is the one of the Claremont Institute's Center for Constitutional Jurispudence, however, that interests me, as John Eastman is listed as the counsel in it, so he obviously had a strong, and perhaps exclusive, hand in its writing. I will therefore be referring to Eastman as the writer.

Before he was disbarred for his conduct regarding the 2020 election and largely considered disgraced, John Eastman well known for being a major advocate of a narrow interpretation of the Citizenship Clause, and he's been filing amicus briefs for this for decades at this point (going back to at least the 2004 Hamdi v. Rumsfeld decision), even before it became a political flashpoint. However, there have been plenty of people who have criticized him or his ideas, as one can see in the essays linked to several paragraphs ago. I was therefore curious: Had he improved the arguments his arguments in order to respond to the various criticisms? I had read some of his earlier writings and was unimpressed, but thought I should see the most up to date writing of his on the topic, which would be this amicus brief, and see if he had improved his arguments by addressing criticisms of them.

Now, at this point someone might be asking why I'm posting this at all. Trump v. CASA was decided several months ago. The Supreme Court will almost certainly get around to deciding the birthright citizenship question eventually anyway--at the time of this posting, they are considering an appeal to decide the issue--so what does an examination of this one particular amicus brief accomplish? Well, the truth is I wrote most of this back when it was somewhat more relevant, but then it kind of fell aside. I decided that since I did put some work into this and would prefer to not see it go to waste, and it might be of use to someone, I might as well post it. So I went through the remainder of the brief I hadn't yet covered (I'll mention when we switch over to that), albeit more in brief, and am now posting it. 

So, after that probably too lengthy opening, we'll take a look at the amicus brief. The opening of his amicus brief asserts that the Supreme Court "never held that the Fourteenth Amendment compels the grant of citizenship to children born in the United States to parents who are merely temporary visitors or unlawfully present." This is a common assertion among those who wish to restrict birthright citizenship, who claim that while the dicta in the decision may indicate such a thing, the actual decision itself did not.

The problem here is that normally when something is regarded as mere "dicta", it is regarding things that were not particularly important to the case, such as some kind of aside note. But the "dicta" in this case essentially was the whole reasoning for the decision. We are not talking about a side paragraph, but the rationale. Thus Eastman's repeated appeals to the decision's rationale as simply being "non-binding dicta" are rather weak. Eastman does attempt to argue that the question of "domicile" was foundational to the decision, but all he is really able to come up with is the fact it was mentioned in the question presented and the word being frequently used.

The mention of domicile, which is interpreted by Eastman as legal permanent residence, is indeed found in the question that Wong Kim Ark said it is deciding. From the opinion:

"The question presented by the record is whether a child born in the United States, of parents of Chinese descent, who, at the time of his birth, are subjects of the Emperor of China, but have a permanent domicil and residence in the United States, and are there carrying on business, and are not employed in any diplomatic or official capacity under the Emperor of China, becomes at the time of his birth a citizen of the United States, by virtue of the first clause of the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution, "All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.""

However, if we were to restrict the decision's conclusion to simply to this question and nothing else, then we would come to the illogical conclusion that while children of such Chinese parents would be citizens, the Court did not decide the issue for those whose parents were Japanese, Canadian, Mexican, Spanish, German, or any other country on Earth beyond China, and they might be disqualified. In fact, the mention of the Chinese Emperor would mean it stopped being effective after the Chinese Emperor was overthrown. This does not make any sense.

Perhaps realizing this, Eastman tries to claim the decision really focused on the mention of domicile. Thus he tries the following claim:

The terms “domicile,” “domiciled,” “permanent domicile,” and “domiciled residents” appear nearly thirty times throughout the majority and dissenting opinions, underscoring the centrality of lawful, permanent residence for the court's reasoning.

The simple number of times a word is used means little by itself. If domicile was actually that critical to the decision, Eastman would be presumably quoting to more specific points where it was actually stressed as important instead of trying to play a numbers game. I should note that the word "Chinese" is used more than forty times in the decision and dissent, even more times than Eastman's reference to domicile, but it would be absurd to claim that this does not mean it cannot apply to those of descents other than Chinese.

Next Eastman offers the following claim:

Respondents attempt to bolster their theory of automatic birthright citizenship by citing a patchwork of historical sources ranging from early Supreme Court cases to fragments of congressional debates and isolated comments from later decisions.

I find this ironic, for critics would say this is exactly what Eastman does.

Following this, Eastman does try to take issue with some of the cases that the respondent (CASA) uses. I actually would agree that some of the cases cited by CASA are a bit weak. Murray v. The Schooner Charming Betsy is a particularly weak appeal. Lynch v. Clark is more valuable, but by itself does not mean much.

Eastman then brings up a common appeal to discussions on the 1866 Civil Rights Act. The 1866 Civil Rights Act stated:

"...all persons born in the United States, and not subject to any foreign power, excluding Indians not taxed, are hereby declared to be citizens of the United States."

The Citizenship Clause of the 14th Amendment substituted this with, as noted:

"All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside."

As we see, "not subject to any foreign power, excluding Indians not taxed" was changed to "subject to the jurisdiction thereof." Various statements by those involved with the Amendment indicated that despite the different wording, the Citizenship Clause was intended to put into the Constitution what was in the 1866 Civil Rights Act. Therefore, quotes are offered allegedly showing that the 1866 Civil Rights Act was to be read narrowly, and therefore also the Citizenship Clause. So, Eastman offers the following quote:

Representative John Bingham, explaining the 1866 Act’s language, clarified that it applied to those “born within the jurisdiction of the United States of parents not owing allegiance to any foreign sovereignty.” Cong. Globe, 39th Cong., 1st Sess. at 1291 (statement of Rep. Bingham). Senator Lyman Trumbull, the Act’s sponsor, repeatedly echoed this, stating the goal was “to make citizens of everybody born in the United States who owe allegiance to the United States.” Cong. Globe, 39th Cong., 1st Sess. at 572 (statement of Sen. Trumbull); see also id. at 527.

At first glance, this looks powerful, but we run into problems.

The much-made-of statement by Bingham of "born within the jurisdiction of the United States of parents not owing allegiance to any foreign sovereignty" has several issues. First, if by "owing allegiance to any foreign sovereignty" he is referring to more specifically diplomats, who most assuredly owe allegiance in a manner that an immigrant does not (hence why they are exempt from laws), then any issue disappears.

Even if we were to suppose there is still an allegiance owed to the foreign sovereignty by immigrants while they are in the United States, to say this was Bingham "clarifying" the matter is an odd one. He was not asked about it, and in fact only mentions it briefly; his main discussion is other matters (he is talking about the importance of safeguarding the rights of citizens), and in regards to the issue of birth citizenship, he simply says he does not have any disagreement with that part of it, and gives the above statement. This was a brief comment that was not his point, and thus may have been stated imprecisely.

As for Trumbull, he was indeed the act's sponsor, so his statements are of more weight than Bingham's. The problem is that Trumbull explicitly states, in a statement that was a clarification, that children born of foreigners would be citizens:

"Mr. COWAN. I will ask whether it will not have the effect of naturalizing the children of Chinese and Gypsies born in this country?

Mr. TRUMBULL. Undoubtedly."

This is found on page 498 of the 39th Congress, First Session (January 30, 1866) of the Congressional Globe. Unlike Bingham's brief comment that was not stated as a clarification, this was a direct clarification to the question, and says that it will naturalize children of foreigners like Chinese or Gypsies (and before anyone tries to claim maybe they're talking about Chinese/Gypsies who were citizens, Chinese were not even able to naturalize as citizens until much later on).

Now, the argument that could be raised is that such people were permanent residents and that changes it, but then that means these citations are useless. If the claim is that because someone is still a citizen of a foreign country and not the United States, they therefore owe allegiance to a foreign sovereignty, this would still be the case even whether they were  permanent resident or not, and whether they were in the US legally or not. What, precisely, is the "allegiance" to their home country that a temporary or illegal resident has or owes but a permanent resident does not? This question appears to go unanswered.

Next we come to the issue of the Justice Story citation, which Eastman claims the respondents misread him as "implying that Story meant that the general rule of jus soli, rather than the exception for temporary sojourners, was what was nearly universally established." I personally would not cite Story's statement as evidence of birthright citizenship, but Eastman appears to mischaracterize CASA's idea. The ones arguing for Trump's position were the one who brought up Story to begin with, trying to assert that it went against birthright citizenship, and CASA simply responded that that's not what Story was saying.

Let's review how the exchange went. First, in the initial appeal to the Supreme Court, Trump (or rather, the lawyers representing him) claims:

"And Justice Story recognized a “reasonable qualification” to birthright citizenship for “the children of parents, who were in itinere in the country, or abiding there for temporary purposes, as for health, or occasional business.” Joseph Story, Commentaries on the Conflict of Laws § 48, at 48 (1834)."

This is a quotation I discussed in an earlier post on the subject. To briefly summarize, Story was not making a formal statement in a court opinion, he was not even clearly referring to the Constitution, his "reasonable qualification" is a statement of should rather than is, and his very next sentence is "It would be difficult, however, to assert, that in the present state of public law such a qualification is universally established."

CASA then responds to the specific Story citation with:

"The government also invokes Justice Story’s conflict of law treatise, which proposes denying citizenship to the children of temporary visitors. Appl. 8. But in the very next sentence, Justice Story candidly concedes that “[i]t would be difficult, however, to assert, that in the present state of public law such a qualification is universally established.” Joseph Story, Commentaries on the Conflict of Laws § 48, at 48 (1834). No matter what was happening abroad, U.S. law remained firmly rooted in jus soli."

CASA was not trying to use Joseph Story to prove the US was following citizenship based on place of birth; it was simply responding to Trump's characterization of his statements. So Eastman's declaration that "Respondents’ reliance on Story’s remark concerning the contemporary state of public law to support near-automatic jus soli ignores the fundamental direction and principles of his analysis regarding American citizenship" is simply assigning more importance to it than they actually did. (the final sentence of the quoted paragraph might suggest otherwise, but it is more in reference to the things preceding) Eastman claims that Story's statement that such a qualification is not universally established is Story saying that it's the case in the US and it's the rest of the world where it's not universally established--but this is simply speculative on his part. Given its ambiguity, I don't think Story's comment is evidence for or against birthright citizenship in the United States, and in fact is downright irrelevant.

Eastman next turns his attention to the Cowan/Conness exchange from the ratification debate, and ironically his entire argument here--that they were trying to distinguish sojourners from permanent residents--ends up gutting his actual position. First, though, here's the argument:

In an attempt to politically derail the Fourteenth Amendment, Senator Cowan asked whether it would extend citizenship to the children of Chinese immigrants and Gypsies, and he specifically asked whether, under the proposed Citizenship Clause, they were to have “more rights than  sojourners.” See Cong. Globe, 39th Cong., 1st Sess. at 2890-91 (statements of Sens. Cowan and Conness). Senator Cowan’s question, distinguishing children born to Chinese immigrants and Gypsies from “sojourners,” necessarily presumes that the children of mere sojourners would not be entitled to automatic citizenship. Senator Conness’s response, therefore, also necessarily only applies to Chinese immigrants and Gypsies who were not mere sojourners. As this is the only reference to “sojourners” in the entire debate, the distinction drawn by Senator Cowan and apparently embraced by Senator Conness is extremely important, and it fully supports the provision in President Trump’s executive order acknowledging that the Fourteenth Amendment does not confer citizenship on the children born to temporary visitors.

Eastman's position, as he has made clear in other writings and repeated in the amicus brief ("Amicus contends that Justice Fuller’s dissenting opinion in the case accurately reflects the original understanding of the Citizenship Clause"), is that Wong Kim Ark was wrong, and that children of non-citizens born in the United States, even if they are here lawfully and permanently, do not gain birthright citizenship. In other words, he would contend that the executive order doesn't go far enough. But despite having that position, here he apparently has to acknowledge that children of at least some non-citizen immigrants had birthright citizenship given what Cowan and Conness were saying. So the argument he just made, if true, actually seems to disprove the position he holds.

However, if we ignore that and simply focus on whether this provides support for the distinction between permanent residents and temporary or illegal residents, it still doesn't make much sense. Let's look at Cowan's emphasized statement of sojourners:

"Mr. COWAN. The honorable Senator from Michigan has given this subject, I have no doubt, a good deal of his attention, and I am really desirous to have a legal definition of "citizenship of the United States." What does it mean? What is its length and breadth? I would be glad if the honorable Senator, in good earnest would favor us with some such definition. Is the child of the Chinese immigrant in California a citizen? Is the child of a Gypsy born in Pennsylvania a citizen? If so, what rights have they? Have they any more rights than a sojourner in the United States? If a traveler comes here from Ethiopia, from Australia, or from Great Britain, he is entitled, to a certain extent, to the protection of the laws. You cannot murder him with impunity. It is murder to kill him, the same as it is to kill another man. You cannot commit an assault and battery on him, I apprehend. He has a right to the protection of the laws; but he is not a citizen in the ordinary acceptation of the word."

Now, it is difficult to know for sure how much of this is a legitimate desire to have answers and how much is him asking rhetorical questions, but it is obvious what Cowan is actually doing with his "Have they any more rights than a sojourner in the United States?" is asking whether these children who are citizens at birth would have more rights than, well, a sojourner. Eastman tries to frame it as Cowan offering a distinction between the children of a Chinese immigrant and the children of a sojourner, but Cowan says nothing of the sort. He is simply asking whether they have more rights than a non-citizen immigrant.

Eastman then offers this claim:

Senators Trumbull and Howard reaffirmed that the phrase “subject to the jurisdiction thereof” imposed a requirement of “complete jurisdiction” and undivided allegiance, thereby excluding children whose parents owed allegiance to a foreign power. See id. at 2893 (statement of Sen. Trumbull); id. at 2895 (statement of Sen. Howard). 

Let's see these statements in better context. 

"Mr. TRUMBULL. Of course my opinion is not any better than that of any other member of the Senate; but it is very clear to me that there is nothing whatever in the suggestions of the Senator from Wisconsin. The provision is, that "all persons born in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens." That means "subject to the complete jurisdiction thereof." Now, does the Senator from Wisconsin pretend to say that the Navajoe Indians are subject to the complete jurisdiction of the United States? What do we mean by "subject to the jurisdiction of the United States?" Not owing allegiance to anybody else. That is what it means. Can you sue a Navajoe Indian in court? Are they in any sense subject to the complete jurisdiction of the United States? By no means. We make treaties with them, and therefore they are not subject to our jurisdiction. If they were, we would not make treaties with them. If we want to control the Navajoes, or any other Indians of which the Senator from Wisconsin has spoken, how do we do it? Do we pass a law to control them? Are they subject to our jurisdiction in that sense? Is it not understood that if we want to make arrangements with the Indians to whom he refers we do it by means of a treaty? The Senator himself has brought before us a great many treaties this session in order to get control of those people."

The underlined are the statements being appealed to. In the first place, we should note everything under discussion is the Native Americans, not immigrants. The two are rather different. The Native Americans had their reservations which were under their laws, not that of the United States (this changed later when the US started passing laws applying to their territories, but this was after the Fourteenth Amendment was passed). An immigrant, on the other hand, is inherently in the regular portion of the United States, unless they are visiting a reservation.

In regards to Trumbull's statement, the "subject to complete jurisdiction" is of little importance; it would simply mean subject to the complete laws of the United States, which immigrants are (diplomats and Native Americans on their reservations, however, are not). The "not owing allegiance to anybody else" is a better thing for him to point to, but it has issues. Again, if "owing allegiance" to someone else meant an immigrant still owed allegiance to their home country, then the argument raised of a distinction between temporary and permanent residents would seem to have no impact. One could make a slightly more plausible argument about illegal immigrants, but they nevertheless owe loyalty to the United States (even if they do not show it) which is exactly why they can be charged for crimes, unlike an ambassador. Further, as Michael Ramsey notes in his article "Originalism and Brithright Citizenship" (page 449), which is one of the essays I linked to early on, any footnotes omitted:

"Second, in the argument over the Clause’s application to Native Americans, Senator Trumbull stated: “What do we mean by ‘subject to the jurisdiction of the United States?’ Not owing allegiance to anybody else.” This language can be read to exclude aliens’ U.S.-born children (who often would also owe allegiance to the country of their parents’ nationality). But Trumbull likely spoke imprecisely, meaning instead (as he also said repeatedly) those over whom the United States did not have “complete” jurisdiction, as the full context of his comment indicates:

"The provision is, that “all persons born in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens.” That means “subject to the complete jurisdiction thereof.” Now, does the Senator from Wisconsin [Doolittle] pretend to say that the Navajoe Indians are subject to the complete jurisdiction of the United States? What do we mean by “subject to the jurisdiction of the United States?” Not owing allegiance to anybody else.

. . .

. . . It is only those persons who come completely within our jurisdiction, who
are subject to our laws, that we think of making citizens . . . .""

Moving on, Eastman complains about the respondents relying on dicta from some cases. He is not without a point that the statements appealed to appear to have been passing statements by the Supreme Court, rather than the actual reasoning for the decision. Still, even if not precedent, dicta at least shows what the Supreme Court thought, and is not worthless. Though it strikes me as inconsistent that despite his dismissal of such things as dicta, he will later in the Slaughter-House Cases appeal to what he acknowledges is dicta!

The initial discussion of common law is not of great importance to us. It is true that the American Revolution did reject some elements of the idea of the common law, including natural-born subjectship, but this does not mean they wholesale abandoned every idea of Britain. 

Indeed, James Madison rather notably said that location, not parentage, was what primarily controlled in the United States. While this isn't necessarily of much relevance to the Citizenship Clause, as he said it long before its passage, this specific idea of common law, of citizenship by location rather than parentage, was clearly not abandoned wholesale.

Now, this was the point where I originally stopped the examination and put it aside, but I don't want to leave the rest of it completely unremarked on, so I'll make some brief comments on the rest.

He appeals, as people of his position often do, to the claim that the Civil Rights Act of 1866 disqualified children of non-citizens and that the Citizenship Clause, which was supposed to do the same thing as the Civil Rights Act in this area, would therefore follow that. Eastman does not, however, mention these rather important quotes. Again from Ramsey's article, going into further detail on a point I myself brought up earlier in this blog post:

"Third, even if one accepts a need to align the Act and the Amendment, it is not clear that it should be done by reading the Amendment narrowly. To the contrary, it appears that the Act’s drafters understood it, like the Amendment, to include U.S.-born children of aliens. Senator Trumbull introduced what became the Act’s Citizenship Clause (with the “not subject to any foreign power” language), leading to the following exchange:

"Mr. COWAN. I will ask whether [Trumbull’s proposal] will not have the effect of naturalizing the children of Chinese and Gypsies born in this country?

Mr. TRUMBULL. Undoubtedly.231

Cowan then argued at length (in expressly racist terms) against adopting Trumbull’s proposed language.232 Trumbull repeated his understanding later in the debate:

I have already said that in my opinion birth entitles a person to citizenship, that every free-born person in this land is, by virtue of being born here, a citizen of the United States, and that the bill now under consideration is but declaratory of what the law now is; but, inasmuch as some persons deny this, I thought it advisable to declare it in terms in the statute itself.233

No one was recorded disputing the effect of Trumbull’s proposal; the question the Senators debated was whether it was a good idea.234 Thus it appears that when Senators said that the Amendment had the same effect as the Act, they took a broad view of the Act (rather than a narrow view of the Amendment)."

One can look at his article if you want to see the footnotes. Anyway, next Eastman tries to offer some quotes from Senators Trumbull, Howard, and Johnson that he claims "leave no room for doubt" that subject to the jurisdiction thereof is different from the jurisdiction that requires aliens and visitors to obey laws. I would say there is plenty of room for doubt. Ramsey discusses these quotes on pages 449-451 of his article and there is little for me to add. I considered repeating his statements here as I did above, but it was a lot and I didn't want to be copying too much.

After that Eastman moves to The Slaughter-House Cases, where the Supreme Court said in the majority opinion that "The phrase, "subject to its jurisdiction" was intended to exclude from its operation children of ministers, consuls, and citizens or subjects of foreign States born within the United States." Eastman admits this is dicta (it really had no relevance to the actual case), but appeals to it on the basis that it is the "this Court's earliest interpretations of the Citizenship Clause". The problem is that The Slaughter-House Cases was a close 5-4 decision. That means a sizable portion of the Court never joined this statement. I know that for the purposes of precedent it doesn't matter whether a decision was 5-4 or 9-0, but as precedent this statement was dismissed by United States v. Wong Kim Ark (which correctly noted that the statement "was wholly aside from the question in judgment, and from the course of reasoning bearing upon that question. It was unsupported by any argument, or by any reference to authorities"). So its precedential value at this point is zero. If, however, the argument is to try to use it to show what people understood it to mean at the time, it does not work well either because again only 55% of the Court signed onto the majority opinion--and this is not getting into the fact that the majority in The Slaughterhouse Cases has come under various criticisms from both liberals and conservatives.

Eastman's appeal to Elk v. Wilkins is completely inadequate, consisting if only one paragraph. Elk v. Wilkins is one of the most argued-over cases in regards to this. Can he not respond to any of the rebuttals that have been brought up? Indeed, Michael Ramsey cites Elk v. Wilkins as evidence against Eastman's position (see page 455 of his article).

Eastman's appeal to Cooley is answered quite directly by Ramsey on pages 457-458:

"Professor Eastman points in particular to the statement in Thomas Cooley’s constitutional law treatise that “subject to the jurisdiction” in the Fourteenth Amendment “meant that full and complete jurisdiction to which citizens generally are subject, and not any qualified and partial jurisdiction, such as may consist with allegiance to some other government.” THOMAS M. COOLEY, THE GENERAL PRINCIPLES OF CONSTITUTIONAL LAW IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 243 (Boston, Little, Brown & Co. 1880); see Eastman, supra note 7, at 174 (relying on this quote as disproving constitutional citizenship for the U.S.-born children of aliens). Cooley’s statement in context is ambiguous, however; he went on to discuss Native American tribes (and, in the third edition, children of foreign sovereigns and ambassadors, children born on foreign ships, and children born under hostile occupation) as being excluded by the “subject to the jurisdiction” requirement; he did not mention other potentially excluded categories, such as children of aliens. See COOLEY, supra; THOMAS M. COOLEY & ANDREW C. MCLAUGHLIN, THE GENERAL PRINCIPLES OF CONSTITUTIONAL LAW IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 270 (Boston, Little, Brown, & Co. 3d ed. 1898). The categories Cooley specifically mentioned were not analogous to U.S.-born children of aliens in this respect, so it is not clear what Cooley thought of the latter. In any event, what Cooley—a respected but fallible authority—thought years after ratification is not definitive."

Eastman appeals to statements from the Secretary of States Frelinghuysen (1880's) and Bayard (1890's) as evidence of early understanding agreeing with Eastman's own views... but ignores the fact that, as Ramsey points out on page 420, in the 1870's, closer to ratification than either of those, Secretary of State Hamilton Fish took a more expansive view, which Eastman does not address.

The Indian Citizenship Act mention is of little consequence; those who take the more expansionist view of the Citizenship Clause agree that the Native Americans were not included under the Citizenship Clause anyway. To be fair, Eastman appears to be trying to take issue specifically with remarks from the Respondent.

Eastman does come to a more interesting argument, which is to note how various Mexicans, of which he claims about 1.2 million were born in the United States, were repatriated back to Mexico after the stock market crash in 1929. Eastman declares " Yet to our knowledge, not a single case was ever brought at the time claiming that the children born in the United States to those who had come as temporary workers in the “Roaring Twenties” and who retained their Mexican citizenship could not be removed because they were citizens. Such silence is deafening."

While an interesting argument I have not seen before, there are multiple reasons why this argument of Eastman fails. First, this occurred after Wong Kim Ark. Eastman may disagree with that decision, but it happened. But even under the more narrow interpretation claimed--that it applied only to legal permanent residents--it appears to me the Mexicans in question would count under that. Eastman appears to offer no argument as to why they would not. So Eastman trying to appeal to this to show that people accepted his viewpoint is immediately dubious because we are not talking about temporary or illegal immigrants, but ones who were here on a more permanent basis prior to them being kicked out.

More plausibly, the reason few (or perhaps none) of those born in the US fought the issue in court is the fact that the children were too young to have any desire to. Even if the children had a legal claim, their parents did not, so what were they supposed to do, remain in the United States without any guardians? Of course they would go where their parents went.

I will admit that this is a part of history I'm very far from an expert on. But it still seems to me that in the end, this cannot be considered evidence for Eastman's claim because it appears they would most certainly have qualified under even the "legal permanent residents only" interpretation of Wong Kim Ark. Whatever reasons they may have had for not challenging it (it being far simpler to go with their parents, lack of legal knowledge, etc.), this does not appear to support his claims.

The argument about passports I don't know enough about to really offer an analysis, but requiring a disclosure of more than just place of birth could have simply been a bureaucratic redundancy.

So I don't think Eastman's arguments here are particularly good. Too many fall apart and he ignores counterarguments; he has been trying to make this argument for quite some time, he can hardly be unaware of them. And ironically, while arguing for a restrictive reading of Wong Kim Ark, his own arguments end up refuting his actual position (that Wong Kim Ark was wrong to begin with). In some fairness, as what this case was about more specifically was the question of universal injunctions, so maybe this wasn't the time to get into too much depth on some of these things. Still, as a point of argumentation it fails considerably in my view, and he really does not properly address many of the criticisms that have been aimed at his viewpoint or his arguments.

And that reaches the end. I don't know if anyone got much out of this, given this was all about an amicus brief in a case that's over and I rushed towards the end, but this would become even more irrelevant if I waited longer to post it. Maybe I'll have more to say after the Supreme Court actually ends up taking up the issue (no doubt Eastman will file another amicus brief on it). In the end, hopefully someone got something out of this post. If this is of use to even just one person, then I suppose it will have served its purpose.

A Repost of Someone Else's Post ("My Last Word on the Fake “Vatican Pachamama Idols” Controversy")

The following is someone else's post from another blog from November 2019. The blog it was originally posted at, however, is now unavailable. Portions of it are available on other websites via them quoting it, and there's actually a full French translation here, but there appears to be nowhere presently online that has the entire original English post. One can read the original post via an archive, but again there's as far as I can tell nowhere that has a full live copy of the original. While I'm not in complete agreement with it, it seems to have some interesting points, so I decided to repost it here so it would be available.

The post below is left unedited the best of my ability, including the formatting (hence it will be in a noticeably different font from this introduction). Everything below this sentence is not my work, but rather that of the original author.

 

My Last Word on the Fake “Vatican Pachamama Idols” Controversy

Do not judge by appearances, but judge with right judgment.

John 7:24

Undeterred by historical and anthropological fact, logical reasoning, sound theology, or basic human decency and the demands of Christian charity, the once-noble news outlet LifeSiteNews (for which I wrote a few articles some years ago) has doubled down in recent weeks on its #FakeNews “Pachmama idols in the Vatican” narrative. 

Since publishing my essay on the manufactured controversy, “No, ‘Mother Earth’ Is Not Pagan,” I have been bombarded by numerous responses, just about evenly split between those who appreciated it and those who continue to insist that the now-infamous images prominently displayed during a prayer service in the Vatican City Gardens, and later in the church of Santa Maria in Traspontina, were pagan idols and were adored as such. I responded to a few of the latter, asking their authors to document their assertions, but naturally none could, and I was met with various replies, nearly all to the effect of, “It’s idolatry until proven otherwise.” 

As I noted in my essay, those peddling the fake “Pachamama” story are right-wing Trostkyites; as such, they do not care about what is objectively true; or rather, “truth” for them is not the correspondence of thought to reality — as the Christian and classical metaphysical tradition insists. Rather, “truth” is whatever advances the desired narrative. Pope Francis is a bad man, a terrible pope, and a heretic (all assertions with which I agree); therefore, anything that paints him in the worst possible light must necessarily be “true,” since it advances that narrative. These neo-traditionalist critics agree with U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez that it’s okay to be “factually incorrect” so long as you are “morally right.” 

This is not an unfair characterization. There is no other reasonable explanation for why people of at least average intelligence would continue promoting the “Pachamama idol” narrative in the face of: 

(1) No evidence that “Pachamama” is an Amazonian deity. I do not claim to be an expert on the Amazon and its indigenous, non-Christian religions, but I do know how to conduct a search via Google, Google Scholar, JSTOR, and other resources, and I have probably read every #FakeNews story on the matter published by LifeSiteNews, EWTN, OnePeterFive, and all the other neo-traditionalist outlets, and I cannot find any scholarly or other documentation that “Pachamama,” an Andean deity, is commonly worshiped by non-Christians in the Amazon. The neo-trads have had over a month to produce such documentation, and it would bolster their case. Their inability to document this, against their own narrative self-interest, along with what appears to be a dearth of scholarly notice of “Pachamama worship” in the Amazon, suggests that the “Pachamama” obsession is one born of basic cultural ignorance: Someone read somewhere that some South American pagans worship “Pachamama,” the Amazon is located in South America, both the Amazon and the Andes begin with the letter “A,” some modern South American nation states cover parts of the Andes and parts of the Amazon, so the identification of the famous images with “Pachamama” was made without any critical reflection. Willfully ignorant journalists at low-brow “news” outlets like LifeSite ran with that narrative without bothering to do any fact-checking. Edit: As I note below in the comments, while it is not impossible that some pagan Amazonians who live near the Andes have adopted the worship of “Pachamama,” this still has not been demonstrated by the papal detractors; and even if such Amazonians did exist, the statuettes in question were purchased at a market in Manaus, Brazil, nowhere near the Andes.

(2) No evidence that “Pachamama” is worshiped via idols. Though it may be hard for some Western pundits to believe, not all “paganism” is the same, and not all “paganism” the world over takes on all the same external forms that paganism in the ancient Near East and Greco-Roman antiquity — the paganism we’re all familiar with from the Bible — did. Why has no one bothered to ask whether Amazonian pagans even worship idols, let alone whether they worship idolic representations of “Pachamama”? Could it be because those, including “Catholic” “journalists,” making these accusations, just don’t care? 

(3) No evidence that “Pachamama” is worshiped via idols that look like these images: 

(4) No evidence that pagan Amazonians worship idols. See (2).

(5) No evidence that pagan Amazonians worship idols that look like the above images (3). 

(6) No evidence that these images represent “Pachamama.” 

(7) No evidence that any of these images were objects of worship at the synod. The neo-traditionalists had a field day with Vatican spokesman Paolo Ruffini’s assertion that “[n]o prostration took place” with respect to these images, juxtaposing that denial with this still-shot from video taken at the Vatican Gardens prayer service:

A pretty damning contradiction of the Vatican’s denial, right? Only if you’re an intellectually lazy hack out to author a hit-piece and cannot be bothered to watch the original video for crucial context. And what is that context, beginning at the 11:20 mark of the video? Amazonian Catholics, directing prayer to God, their arms raised in the traditional orans and their gaze directed heavenward — symbolic gestures practiced by Christians all across the denominational spectrum, and one, incidentally, having its roots in ancient Near Eastern paganism, when people believed their gods really did dwell in “heaven,” i.e., Sky-Vault; during this prayer the participants briefly prostrate themselves in worship, before quickly rising again and continuing to pray gazing heavenward. No fair observer would construe this as prayer or any other form of worship directed toward the images the worshipers are circling.

But if these images are not being worshiped, why are they being displayed and encircled in the first place? That one’s easy. As anyone can see for himself, there are many images and artifacts from the Amazon displayed during this service, evidently representing the people of the Amazon rainforest: iconic representations of indigenous Amazonian men and women, musical instruments, what appears to be a walking stick, miniature canoes, etc. These are not idols; this is an elaborate diorama representing the people being prayed for. 

Several years ago, I visited a buddy who was studying at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary in Wake Forest, North Carolina. He gave me a tour of his campus, and one of the buildings he showed me featured a giant globe surmounting an open Bible, signifying the missionary reach and aspirations of the Southern Baptist Convention. In this room (if I recall correctly) were several photographs, including this one, of students kneeling and prostrating in prayer before the image:

Southern Baptist seminarians worshiping the Appalachian deity Globe-a-Papa. Okay, not really.

Is it not obvious to any culturally literate man of good will what is on display in this photograph: Southern Baptist seminary students praying for their churches’ missionary endeavors and the people they intend to evangelize? Isn’t it obvious that this globe isn’t an idol, or even an object of relative veneration in the manner familiar to Catholic and Orthodox Christians, but that the students here are simply giving symbolic, visible expression to their prayers for that which this globe represents? Though I would not put it past their journalists at this point, one assumes the folks over at LifeSiteNews are not about to accuse students at one of the nation’s premier Southern Baptist institutions of higher learning of offering prayer to an Appalachian deity named “Globe-a-Papa.”

(Wake Forest is not located in Appalachia, but it is located in North Carolina, and North Carolina includes parts of Appalachia, so there’s no telling what “Catholic” neo-traditionalists and Evangelical fundamentalists will make of this.)

Finally, if these really were idols, and worshiped as such, why have the neo-traditionalists not been able to present a single other example of these images supposedly being bowed before? The Synod of Bishop for the Pan-Amazon Region went on for nearly a month after the Vatican Gardens ceremony (October 6-27). If these really were idols, why was no one able to capture a photograph of their being worshiped as such (as opposed to simply displayed) in Santa Maria in Traspontina during all that time? The answer is simple: These are not idols at all.

In addition to all the above negative considerations, we have:

(8) Repeated and insistent affirmations by Vatican officials and synod organizers that these images were not representations of “Pachamama,” were not idols, and were not the objects of religious worship of any kind. Anyone who claims he is “confused” by “mixed messages” from Church authorities is either mentally deficient or lying., because Church officials have clearly and consistently rebutted the “Pachamama idol” narrative, as thoroughly documented by Catholic author Pedro Gabriel. 

But wait, didn’t Pope Francis himself later refer to these images as “pachamamas”? This objection too is disingenuous, as the neo-trads were running with this narrative in the face of repeated Vatican and synod-organizer denials long before Pope Francis indirectly weighed in. In any event the pope’s ill-chosen words were not only contrary to literally all the other available evidence, but were subsequently corrected by his own spokesman, who explained that “the pope used the word as a means to identify the statues because that is the way they have become known in the Italian media and not as a reference to the goddess.”

(9) The video from which the supposedly damning photograph of “Pachamama worship” is taken shows quite clearly that it’s not these images that are being prostrated before. See (7) above.

(9a) Relatedly, why, if these images were “Pachamama idols” being adored as such, is there literally no other evidence — by way of photograph or eyewitness testimony — of anyone venerating them (e.g., bowing before them, prostrating before them) during the nearly month-long synod (Oct. 6-27)? See (7) above.

(10) We have the complete and utter unavailability of anyone — literally, anyone — to document items (1)-(7) above, despite the fact that the ‘Murican neo-traditionalist media outlets that started this urban legend had every incentive to justify their calumny by, say, sharing scholarship or photographs of Amazonian pagan worship and proving that these images were part and parcel of it. 

Let me quickly address two further objections:

(1) “Pope Francis defenders themselves lied when they claimed these images were representations of the Blessed Virgin Mary, under the title Our Lady of the Amazon.”

There was no such lie. In fact, while according to all authoritative accounts these images were not originally intended to represent any specific personage, but were mere artistic representations of pregnant indigenous women, some of the Amazonian faithful attending the synod did, in fact, take to identifying these as indigenous representations of Mary, Mother of Jesus. Pedro Gabriel documented this, here and here. 

This may not be the first time in history such a thing has happened. Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa, in his The Leopard, a traditionalist — real traditionalist — classic commonly considered the greatest historical novel of the twentieth century, famously satirized a similar happening on the part of pious aristocratic spinsters in post-Risorgimento Sicily:

When Monsignor [the vicar general] entered, the [private] chapel was lit by the late afternoon sun, which fell full on the picture above the altar so venerated by the Salina ladies. It was a painting in the style of Cremona and represented a slim and very attractive young woman, with eyes turned to heaven and an abundance of brown hair scattered in gracious disorder on half-bare shoulders; in her right hand she was gripping a crumpled letter, with an expression of anxious expectancy not unconnected with a certain sparkle in her glistening eyes. Behind her was a green and gentle Lombard landscape. No Holy Child, no crowns, no snakes, no stars, in fact none of those symbols which usually accompany the image of our Lady; the painter must have relied on the virginal expression as a sufficient mark of recognition. Monsignor drew nearer, went up one of the altar steps and stood there, without crossing himself, looking at the picture for a minute or two, his face all smiling admiration as if he were an art critic. Behind him the sisters made signs of the Cross and murmured a Hail Mary.

Then the prelate came down the steps again and turned around. “A beautiful painting,” he said, “very expressive.”

“A miraculous image, Monsignor, most miraculous!” explained Caterina, poor ill creature, leaning from her [wheelchair].

“It has worked so many miracles!” Carolina pressed on. “It represents the Madonna of the Letter. The Virgin is on the point of consigning the holy missive invoking her divine Son’s protection on the people of Messina: a protection which has been gloriously conceded, as is shown by the many miracles during the earthquake of two years ago.”

“A fine picture, Signorina; whatever it represents, it’s a pretty thing and should be treated carefully.” . . . 

[Later:] “And so you, Father Titta, have actually said Mass for years in front of the picture of that girl? Of that girl with a rendezvous waiting for her lover? Now don’t tell me you too believed it was a holy image.”

“Monsignor, I am to blame, I know. But it’s not easy to gainsay the Signorina Carolina. That you can’t know.”

Monsignor shivered at the memory. “My son, you’ve put your finger on it; and that will be taken into consideration.”

Chapter 8, “Relics”

Second, I am often referred to the long litany of conservative prelates and priests who have hopped on the “condemn Pachamama idol” bandwagon. “Why should I believe you over these clergy?” For starters, no one should “believe” me about anything: I’m simply presenting the evidence, evidence which has not been contradicted or rebutted by a single one of these clerics. My readers and interlocutors should view the evidence for themselves, and if they cannot rebut it they ought to submit — not to me, but to the truth so evinced. I would add that it’s especially rich to hear vocal critics of Pope Francis resort to their own version of low-level ultramontanism, as if we Catholics believed that objective reality and truth changes itself to accommodate the ideas and opinions of priests and bishops. A lie does not cease to be a lie simply because a bishop tells it. The earth did not magically become the geographical center of the universe when Pope Urban VIII condemned Galileo and placed his heliocentric works on the Index Librorum Prohibitorum; likewise, what is not idolatry does not magically become idolatry just because Cardinals Muller and Burke, or Fr. Mitch Pacwa, say it is. If prelates and priests join in smear campaigns and tell lies, all the greater is their sin, precisely because they are ordained ministers of the Gospel. 

Finally, several of the neo-traditionalist lie-peddlers have accused me of being uncharitable to them, pleading that I am wrong to assume that they are motivated by malice or by reckless disregard for objective truth, when they may in fact simply be mistaken. I disagree: You don’t get to claim the benefit of doubt when you’re the initiator of calumny and refuse to grant that same benefit to others, particularly when you run once-respected conservative news or essay-outlets and posses both the requisite mental faculties and adequate resources for research. LifeSiteNews and other “conservative Catholic” news outlets know, or ought to know, better.

Lying — even “lying for Christ” — is a sin, mortally so when one willfully and intentionally (or negligently) lies on a grave matter, such as accusing one’s pastors and one’s brethren in Christ of committing what is literally the worst of all possible sins. God will not be mocked, either by political leftists and theological modernists who invoke His name to advance all manner of degeneracy, or by right-wing “conservative” neo-traditionalists who invoke it to spread lies. For the sake of their souls, and for their own journalistic credibility, the peddlers of the “Pachamama meme” need to repent of their sins and publicly correct their published misinformation.

Ron Wyatt and the Blood of Jesus

This is something I did research into and wrote up quite a while ago (years, in fact), but ended up never posting. Because the information might be useful, I've opted to "dust off" the post and put it up after some editing. Due to the length of time between writing and posting it, it is possible information here may be a bit out of date (one link stopped working between writing and posting it, and one of the people discussed in this post, Henry Gruver, died in the meantime!), but again perhaps it will be of use to someone.

This post concerns a claim of Ron Wyatt. Ron Wyatt was a man who claimed to have found no small number of biblical artifacts, including but not limited to: Noah's Ark, the location of Sodom and Gomorrah, the Tower of Babel site, the Ark of the Convent, and Jesus's blood on said ark (fallen there from the Crucifixion).

Ron Wyatt has come under criticism for his various claims; for example, here is a site going through him in detail. However, the specific question here is the claim of having found the blood of Jesus (when he found the Ark of the Covenant) and had it analyzed by a laboratory. The laboratory, according to him, told him that it was blood but that, unlike normal human blood, which has 46 chromosomes, this blood had only 24 Chromosomes--23 female (from the mother) and 1 male. This is allegedly the blood of Jesus, as Jesus had no human father if the virgin birth is true, and the male chromosome added because Jesus was male.

An astounding claim... but one he has did not offer proof for. He never made public any lab reports or even said what lab he tested it at. Given this lack of offered proof, many have concluded he made the whole thing up.

Now, these criticisms are things one can already easily find online (e.g. the link above or also here) or even in print (e.g. the book "Holy Relics or Revelation : Recent Astounding Archaeological Claims Evaluated"). While I don't necessarily agree with everything on those sources, they do appear to explain well the lack of evidence on this. So normally there wouldn't be much reason to bother with this post. But there are a few defenses I've seen that don't seem to often be responded to, so I wanted to look into them a little.

Defenders I have seen generally claim two things: One, that those who met Wyatt found him to be trustworthy, and the second is that there are those who claim to have seen the lab reports. How good are these?

In regards to the first, one issue with various of these people cited is that they are not necessarily trustworthy themselves. For example, someone I've seen cited sometimes is Michael Rood, who
complained that those who criticize Wyatt are frequently those who never met him; this is a weak claim. Why is that a prerequisite to examining the evidence?

As for Rood himself, he has certainly come under some criticism himself. For example, he's given false prophecies. See, for example, this page (no longer around, perhaps to obscure it, but an archive is available):

Specifically:

In the coming months we will see that Iraq has nuclear warheads that were produced outside of the country, and brought into Iraq after the U.N. inspectors conveniently left the Job in the late 1990’s.  The warheads were flown into Iraq and sealed into the rocket-propelled flying containers, which will be launched from the land of Shinar against Israel.  The land of Israel, the house of the LORD, will be judged first.  But the judgment will continue into the Christian world, which has been profusely swearing falsely.  In order to bring America into the battle theatre with Iraq, a major incident will be necessary.  Zechariah records that incident – he saw it take place – and so did I.

So according to him, Iraq not only had nuclear weapons that they brought in after the UN weapon inspectors left, it was going to launch them at Israel. As anyone will know, the US invaded Iraq on the assumption that Iraq had those weapons--which turned out to be false.

This doesn't make Rood a liar. Maybe he actually did think this was a legitimate prediction. In fact, I'd say it's more likely than not he did believe it; fake seers, or at least the smart ones, don't give predictions that can be disproved in the near future. Still, this is hardly the only example; this page goes over some of his prophecies that didn't pan out. Again, this doesn't necessarily mean he's a liar, as he could think they were real prophecies and be mistaken. But it's an issue if you are trying to rely on his judgment. And furthermore, even if Rood thought Wyatt was credible, there were others who met Wyatt had issues with him; here is testimony from someone who says they knew him who did not find him credible. 

But the important one here is Henry Gruver, who is probably the reason this post exists at all, as I have not seen much examination of him in regards to this. His testimony can be found here.

This is of course a site devoted to trying to prop up Ron Wyatt's claims about finding Noah's Ark (a claim not under examination in this post, but someone offered a critique here), so this holds up Gruver's testimony as evidence, and the page also cites Jonathan Gray and Jesslyn Johnson. However, Gray appears to be so far in with Wyatt that if Wyatt is a fraud, so is he. As for Johnson, the page claims "Jesslyn Johnson said Ron had the blood tested in Israel and on the final day he "took his lab report and left."" This quote attributed to her I cannot find attributed to her anywhere else. Notably, the page does not claim either of them actually saw the lab reports.

The page primarily concerns Henry Gruver, though. This page is not directly written by Gruver, but rather is what someone else said Gruver told them. However, I did find a video in which Gruver discusses it and he says basically the same things as are on that, so I think we can consider this an accurate description of his remarks. Gruver does say he saw the lab reports, and that they were verified by a documentation specialist in a meeting with Demos Shakarin. Does this lend credence to their authenticity?

Well, we only have Henry Gruver's word that the meeting occurred. Demos Shakarin passed away quite a while ago, and appears to have done so before Gruver made this claim. So he cannot give any confirmation or denial. And if this evidence could be presented to them by Wyatt, why exactly could he not simply make it public?

Even ignoring that, various other questions remain. First, exactly what were the credentials of this "documentation specialist" that verified that the lab reports were legitimate? Gruver claims that they were certified. But as far as I can tell, there is no such certification. Searching indicates there is a certification for CLINICAL documentation specialist, but that position has nothing to do with what was described. Perhaps he did not remember the specific job title correctly. But that brings us to the question of, assuming he is saying what he thinks is true, how well he's remembering it to begin with. That testimony was given back in 2012, about 22 years after the event supposedly happened, and he was 70 years old at the time.

But even assuming the documentation specialist was qualified, how exactly could the documentation specialist verify them? Gruver says he verified the signatures and record numbers, because he had information from "every laboratory around the world." I'll admit I'm not an expert on laboratories, but it seems that would be too much documentation to lug around, and is that information they would even give out? And if the specialist can have all that information (signatures, laboratory order numbers), then why in the world couldn't they simply contact the labs and get confirmation? This documentation specialist clearly had to have contacted them to get all those test numbers. This whole thing seems like a needlessly roundabout way to confirm what should be easy to do by simply contacting the applicable labs.

To my knowledge, Wyatt has never disclosed where he had the blood tested, only that it was somewhere in Israel. However, a separate laboratory-related claim of his is that he found the ruins of Noah's Ark and that it was tested at Galbraith Laboratories. Looking it up, this is questionable:
https://creation.com/special-report-amazing-ark-expose

Admittedly, this involves independent research on their part I cannot verify. But it's hard to accuse Creation Ministries International of bias in this given that a creationist organization would be predisposed to believe in the discovery of an ark. If they are saying it's false, that seems a strong indication it is.

There is another reason to be skeptical of Henry Gruver's testimony. Henry Gruver makes the claim that Wyatt was not a Seventh Day Adventist. Everything I have found about him elsewhere says he was (this is why it is notable that one of the most in depth criticisms of him, the book "Holy Relics or Revelation", was written by two Seventh Day Adventists). I suppose it is theoretically possible everyone else was wrong, but if he was in fact a Seventh Day Adventist, it would seem that Gruver is either making this up, perhaps to make Wyatt seem more palatable to those who are not Seventh Day Adventists, or he is misremembering things. In either of these situations, his testimony regarding the documentation specialist becomes more suspect, because if he remembered Wyatt's religion incorrectly or is lying about it, why could that not be true for the experience with the documentation specialist?

It ultimately seems to me that Henry Gruver's testimony provides little backing for Wyatt's claims. Gruver's account brings up too many questions, has no corroborating witnesses, and is given by someone who has incentive to verify Wyatt's authority given that he went around advertising his claims. To be clear, I am not accusing him of deliberately lying. Even if what he says is false, he could have simply not remembered things properly after more than 20 years. But the testimony seems very questionable.

I did try to see what kind of information I could find out about him, personally. Unfortunately, outside of a few individuals that seem a bit out there themselves, there doesn't seem to be anyone that did a real examination. One I found was here, which had some people being critical and some people praising them... unfortunately, they're all semi-anonymous people on the Internet. (note: The URL is now defunct, and it does not seem to have ever been archived by archive.org. I will retain the link just in case it is ever restored or there is some archive someone can find elsewhere)

So in summation, the claims of Ron Wyatt finding the blood of Jesus on the Ark of the Covenant appears to have no apparent real backing. No one has been able to demonstrate the laboratory evidence that he supposedly found, and even people who knew him personally have not claimed to actually see it. Gruver seems to be one of the few people that claims to have seen the laboratory evidence, and his account has many questionable aspects.

Others have done more in-depth examinations of Wyatt's claims in this area, and yes, there have indeed been some defenses on these points. However, I didn't see people who had looked into what Gruver said about him, so I thought the information might be useful to someone. While I am skeptical, as can presumably be seen in this post, let the reader draw their own conclusions.