Fictional Truth
The United States Constitution is a simple, straightforward, document until it needs to be applied to living persons and everyday situations. Billions of hours and dollars have been spent over more than two centuries shaping its words and bending its intentions to meet certain ends. Its very simplicity has made it an exercise field for lawyers and Constitutional scholars.
The drafters used a minimum of well-chosen words, simply stated, to craft the Constitution into the spine of our nation. You can look at the document in two parts . . . the first is structural, setting up an Executive Branch to implement its terms and the terms of all laws passed by the Legislative Branch, and adding a Supreme Court to keep them both, and us, on the straight and narrow. The second part is the Bill of Rights, comprised originally by Amendments 1-10.
In the Bill of Rights, citizenship plays virtually no role.
In the structural segment, citizenship has an all-important function. In one form or another the President and members of Congress are required to be citizens. However, nothing can be found in the words of the Constitution about citizenship being required to sit as a Justice on the United States Supreme Court.
Therein lies a Tale . . . and a thought completed in my new novel, JUSTICE