The question “Am I an American or am I not?” was uttered more than eight decades ago by Fred Korematsu as the federal government prepared to remove him from his home under military orders during World War II.

It was not a philosophical exercise or an abstract appeal. It was the plea of a U.S.-born citizen confronted with a government that suddenly decided his rights were conditional. His question endures because it captures a recurring conflict in the nation’s history.

It asks who this country chooses to recognize as fully American, and who it marks as an exception.

That conflict is no longer confined to the textbooks chronicling wartime incarceration. It now intersects with a modern legal battle over birthright citizenship, after the Supreme Court agreed to hear a case that could revis

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