Society of Fellows Hidetaka Hirota (2013–2016) was cited in the Supreme Court decision that upholds birthright citizenship. The Opinion of the Court, delivered by Chief Justice Roberts, cites Hirota's Expelling the Poor (Oxford University Press 2017), "describing outcry in 1855 when Massachusetts deported a pauper Irish mother with her American-born infant, who was acknowledged to be a 'native born citizen.'"

“It's an honor to be cited in the U.S. Supreme Court ruling on an issue of critical importance for our society,” Hirota told UC Berkeley, where he is currently an associate professor. “I appreciate the majority justices' serious handling of history and historical scholarship. The decision demonstrates how historians' work continues to matter in our society today.”

In Expelling the Poor, Hirota reinterprets the origins of immigration restrictions in the US and locates the roots of American immigration control in cultural prejudice against the Irish and, more essentially, economic concerns about their poverty in nineteenth-century New York and Massachusetts. Expelling the Poor was Hirota's first monograph.

Read the full Supreme Court ruling here.

Read UC Berkeley's writeup of Hidetaka Hirota's citation