The ghost of John Eastman haunts Chapman

Illustration by Sami Seyedhosseini, Cartoonist

In the five years since former Professor John Eastman retired from Chapman, he has been involved in cases brought to the Supreme Court twice. And both times, shortly in tow, Chapman’s reputation.

Most recently, Eastman’s discourse on reevaluating the 14th Amendment, which he has advocated for since 2005, has served as a blueprint to President Donald Trump’s efforts to regulate birthright citizenship.

In January 2025, Trump signed an executive order to alter the conditions for birthright citizenship laid out in the 14th Amendment. While the amendment states, “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States,” Trump is advocating that this does not apply to children of illegal immigrants or legal temporary residents.

The order has been repeatedly blocked by federal courts, but in early April, the arguments were brought before the Supreme Court.

“(Eastman) is the modern originator of this particular argument about the 14th Amendment, and he’s also the primary advocate from the last several decades,” said Delp-Wilkinson Chair in Peace Studies Lisa Leitz.

Eastman, who served as the founding dean of Fowler School of Law from 2007 to 2010 and then as a professor before his retirement in 2021, has caused campus uproar on more than one occasion.

Before the 2020 presidential election, Eastman published an opinion on Newsweek challenging then senator and vice-presidential candidate Kamala Harris’ citizenship.

“Her father was (and is) a Jamaican national, her mother was from India, and neither was a naturalized U.S. citizen at the time of Harris' birth in 1964,” Eastman said in the article. “That, according to these commentators, makes her not a ‘natural born citizen’ — and therefore ineligible for the office of the president and, hence, ineligible for the office of the vice president.”

The piece received much backlash for racism, xenophobia and perpetuating birtherism — a conspiracy theory founded in attempting to delegitimize Barack Obama as a U.S. citizen.

Chapman associate law professor Nahal Kazemi co-wrote and published a response to Eastman’s opinion in the Chapman Law Review. Disagreeing with Eastman’s interpretation, she argues that his definition would illegitimize many other politicians' citizenship, including Trump’s.

“At the time, most law professors and scholars in the field resoundingly rejected the argument made in the Newsweek article, but they didn’t go into the details. They just said that this isn’t a serious argument,” Kazemi told The Panther. “I thought, regardless of whether I thought it was a serious argument or not, we should go ahead and explain why it is incorrect.”

Kazemi, who had been a foreign service officer and served a tour as a counselor officer, said there are only two situations in which one would be exempt from the jurisdiction of the United States and thereby from birthright citizenship: if they were born into diplomatic or combatant immunity.

Diplomatic immunity frees foreign diplomatic agents and their families from U.S. criminal and civil laws. Combatant immunity exempts invading armies and authorized civilians, such as press or medical personnel, from the same laws. Neither of these applied to Harris’ parents at her time of birth in Oakland, California.

To show the faculty’s opinion on the matter, Leitz led a petition opposing Eastman’s piece and sharing a counter viewpoint.

“(Faculty) were really horrified,” she said. “Especially coming off of Black Lives Matter, to have someone questioning a Black woman’s right to run for presidency on such a fringe legal idea.”

Months later, after Joe Biden and Harris were elected president and vice president, Eastman filed a Supreme Court case seeking to overturn the election.

After his public advocacy to reverse the election, Leitz said many faculty members, such as herself, began calling for more extreme measures.

“This is someone who is now using his capacity as a professional academic to promote ideas that are false, and he knows are false,” said Leitz. “So that (faculty) saw as academic misconduct, and would potentially be a fireable offense.”

Eastman’s participation in attempting to overturn the election escalated when he spoke at the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection.

“We weren’t calling for him to be fired until he crossed a line,” Leitz said. “It’s one thing to have a different opinion, and it's a whole other thing for it to be knowingly false, and that crosses an ethical line in both traditional academia and in legal scholarship.”

Eastman’s retirement from Chapman was announced two weeks later, and he published his own resignation letter on The American Mind.

He was suspended from practicing law in California in 2024 while under review for 11 counts of false election claims, pressuring officials and conspiracy to obstruct. He also had his license suspended in Washington, D.C.

Eastman was disbarred by the State Bar of California on April 15, 2026, but reportedly has plans to bring the ruling to the Supreme Court.

Despite his political track record, Kazemi views Eastman’s impact on Chapman as minimal.

“(Eastman) is just not something that I see particularly relevant to my work or what my students are trying to do,” she said.

Yet, Leitz holds a counter view.

“He wasn’t fired (from Chapman), he retired,” she said. “So I think to some extent (Chapman) has to own it, unfortunately.”

The Supreme Court’s ruling on birthright citizenship is expected in either June or July.

“I think at least five of the justices are highly skeptical (of Trump’s argument) purely on the merits,” said Kazemi. “There is no history or tradition of case law that supports the law that one has to be born to someone who has (the) legal status of lawful permanent residency in the United States.”

If the argument favoring the new interpretation of the 14th Amendment passes, she fears the outcome.

“This would be an administrative nightmare,” Kazemi said. “Trying to figure out who is a U.S. citizen is very difficult if you can’t rely on (the fact) that everyone who was born in the U.S. is a U.S. citizen.”