Source: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-caDC-08-05078/USCOURTS-caDC-08-05078-0/pdf.json

Nature of Suit Code: 890
Nature of Suit: Other Statutory Actions
Cause of Action: 

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United States Court of Appeals 

FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA CIRCUIT

Argued February 5, 2009 Decided April 7, 2009 

No. 08-5078 

ROGER C.S. LIN, ET AL., 

APPELLANTS

v. 

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, 

APPELLEE

Appeal from the United States District Court 

for the District of Columbia 

(No. 1:06-cv-01825) 

Charles H. Camp argued the cause for appellants. With 

him on the briefs was Peter C. Hansen. 

Melissa N. Patterson, Attorney, U.S. Department of Justice, 

argued the cause for appellee. With her on the brief were 

Gregory G. Katsas, Assistant Attorney General, Jeffrey A. 

Taylor, U.S. Attorney, and Mark B. Stern, Attorney. R. Craig 

Lawrence, Assistant U.S. Attorney, entered an appearance. 

Before: HENDERSON, BROWN, and GRIFFITH, Circuit 

Judges. 

USCA Case #08-5078 Document #1174554 Filed: 04/07/2009 Page 1 of 11
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Opinion for the Court filed by Circuit Judge BROWN. 

 BROWN, Circuit Judge: America and China’s tumultuous 

relationship over the past sixty years has trapped the inhabitants 

of Taiwan in political purgatory. During this time the people on 

Taiwan have lived without any uniformly recognized 

government. In practical terms, this means they have uncertain 

status in the world community which infects the population’s 

day-to-day lives. This pervasive ambiguity has driven 

Appellants to try to concretely define their national identity and 

personal rights. 

Initially, the individual Appellants sought modest relief: 

they wanted passports. More specifically, they wanted 

internationally recognized passports. Now, however, Appellants 

seek much more. They want to be U.S. nationals with all related 

rights and privileges, including U.S. passports. Determining 

Appellants’ nationality would require us to trespass into a 

controversial area of U.S. foreign policy in order to resolve a 

question the Executive Branch intentionally left unanswered for 

over sixty years: who exercises sovereignty over Taiwan. This 

we cannot do. Because the political question doctrine bars 

consideration of Appellants’ claims, the district court had no 

choice but to dismiss Appellants’ complaint for lack of subject 

matter jurisdiction. Accordingly, we affirm. 

I 

At the end of the Sino-Japanese War, in 1895, China 

relinquished the island of Taiwan (then Formosa) to Japan. 

Treaty of Shimonoseki, China-Japan, art. 2(b), April 17, 1895, 

181 Consol. TS 217. After its defeat in World War II, Japan 

surrendered sovereignty over Taiwan to the Allied forces in 

1945. See 91 CONG. REC. S8348–49 (1945) (Text of Japanese 

Order). Specifically, General Douglas MacArthur ordered the 

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Japanese commanders within China and Taiwan to surrender to 

Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek, id., leader of the Chinese 

Nationalist Party, The Chinese Revolution of 1949, 

http://www.state.gov/r/pa/ho/time/ cwr/88312.htm (last visited 

March 4, 2009). In 1949, China’s civil war—a battle between 

Chinese nationalists and communists—ended; mainland China 

fell to the communists and became the People’s Republic of 

China (“P.R.C.”), forcing Chiang Kai-shek to flee to Taiwan 

and re-establish the Republic of China (“R.O.C.”) in exile. Id.

On September 8, 1951, Japan signed the San Francisco 

Peace Treaty (“SFPT”) and officially renounced “all right, title 

and claim to Formosa and the Pescadores.” Treaty of Peace 

with Japan, art. 2(b), Sept. 8, 1951, 3 U.S.T. 3169, 136 U.N.T.S. 

45. The SFPT does not declare which government exercises 

sovereignty over Taiwan. It does generally identify the United 

States as “the principal occupying Power,” but does not indicate 

over what. Id. at art. 23(a). 

In 1954, the United States recognized the R.O.C. as the 

government of China, acknowledged its control over Taiwan, 

and promised support in the event of a large-scale conflict with 

the P.R.C. Mutual Defense Treaty Between the United States of 

America and the Republic of China, U.S.-R.O.C., Dec. 2, 1954, 

6 U.S.T. 433; The Taiwan Strait Crises: 1954–55 and 1958, 

http://www.state.gov/r/pa/ho/time/lw/88751.htm (last visited 

March 4, 2009). The ensuing decades, however, brought 

improved diplomatic relations with the P.R.C. and the United 

States’ posture on Taiwan’s sovereign changed. Starting in 

1972, the United States recognized that the P.R.C. considered 

Taiwan a part of China and specifically declined to challenge 

that position. See DEP’T ST.BULL., Mar. 20, 1972, at 435, 437–

38 (setting forth the text of Joint Communiqué by U.S. and 

P.R.C., the “Shanghai Communiqué,” issued on February 27, 

1972). In 1979, President Carter recognized the P.R.C. as the 

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sole government of China and simultaneously withdrew 

recognition from the R.O.C. See DEP’T ST. BULL., January 1, 

1979 (setting forth the text of Joint Communiqué on the 

Establishment of Diplomatic Relations Between the U.S. and 

P.R.C., issued on December 15, 1978); see also Goldwater v. 

Carter, 617 F.2d 697, 700 (D.C. Cir.), vacated, 444 U.S. 996 

(1979). 

This change in policy prompted Congress to pass the 

Taiwan Relations Act of 1979 (“TRA”), 22 U.S.C. § 3301 et 

seq., in order to spell out the United States’ new, unofficial 

relationship with “the people on Taiwan.” See id. § 3301 

(“[T]he Congress finds that the enactment of this Act is 

necessary to help maintain peace, security, and stability in the 

Western Pacific; and . . . authoriz[e] the continuation of 

commercial, cultural, and other relations between the people of 

the United States and the people on Taiwan.”). The TRA 

established the American Institute in Taiwan (“AIT”) as the 

unofficial U.S. representative for relations with Taiwan. Id. § 

3305. The AIT, inter alia, “processes visa applications from 

foreign nationals and provides travel-related services for 

Americans.” United States ex rel. Wood v. Am. Inst. in Taiwan, 

286 F.3d 526, 529 (D.C. Cir. 2002). There is no indication the 

Congress or the Executive gave the AIT any responsibility for 

processing passport applications for the people on Taiwan. 

The TRA also outlined the United States’ “expectation that 

the future of Taiwan will be determined by peaceful means” and 

its intention “to provide Taiwan with arms of a defensive 

character.” Id. § 3301(b); see also id. § 3302 (describing the 

provision of defense articles and services to Taiwan). Despite 

the executive renunciation of ties with the R.O.C., Congress 

pledged to maintain relations with the people on Taiwan and 

supply the government with weapons. Id. Thus began decades 

of “strategic ambiguity” with respect to sovereignty over 

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Taiwan. CRS Issue Brief IB98034, Taiwan: Recent 

Developments and U.S. Policy Choices, by Kerry B. Dumbaugh, 

Foreign Affairs, Defense, and Trade Division, January 24, 2006. 

In 2006, Appellants, residents of Taiwan and members of 

the Taiwan Nation Party, attempted multiple times to submit 

applications for U.S. passports to the AIT for processing. The 

AIT refused to accept the applications and, ultimately, prevented 

Appellants from delivering further submissions. Appellants 

filed a complaint in the district court seeking essentially two 

declarations: (1) the AIT’s refusal to process the individual 

Appellants’ passport applications wrongfully deprived them of 

their status as U.S. nationals and attendant rights; and 

(2) Appellants are U.S. nationals entitled to all associated rights, 

particularly those flowing from the First, Fifth, Eighth, and 

Fourteenth Amendments. Am. Compl. 18–19. The district 

court dismissed the case for lack of subject matter jurisdiction 

under the political question doctrine. On appeal, Appellants 

admit Taiwan does not currently have a recognized sovereign, 

but argue that until it does, the SFPT established the United 

States as Taiwan’s “principal occupying power,” effectively 

giving the United States temporary de jure sovereignty. 

According to Appellants, no subsequent treaty or law abrogates 

this aspect of the SFPT. When permanent sovereignty is 

ultimately decided, they concede the United States’ supposed de 

jure sovereignty will cease; but, in the meantime, Appellants 

consider themselves non-citizen U.S. nationals. 

II 

We review the district court’s dismissal of Appellants’ 

claims de novo. Piersall v. Winter, 435 F.3d 319, 321 (D.C. Cir. 

2006). Under the political question doctrine, a court must 

decline jurisdiction if there exists “a textually demonstrable 

constitutional commitment of the issue to a coordinate political 

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department.” Baker v. Carr, 369 U.S. 186, 217 (1962). 

“[D]ecision-making in the fields of foreign policy and national 

security is textually committed to the political branches of 

government.” Schneider v. Kissinger, 412 F.3d 190, 194 (D.C. 

Cir. 2005). Because deciding sovereignty is a political task, 

Appellants’ case is nonjusticiable. Jones v. United States, 137 

U.S. 202, 212 (1890) (“Who is the sovereign, de jure or de 

facto, of a territory, is not a judicial, but a political[] question . . 

. .”); Baker, 369 U.S. at 212 (“[R]ecognition of foreign 

governments so strongly defies judicial treatment that without 

executive recognition a foreign state has been called ‘a republic 

of whose existence we know nothing . . . .”). 

Appellants argue this is a straightforward question of treaty 

and statutory interpretation and well within the Article III 

powers of the court. It is and it isn’t. The political question 

doctrine deprives federal courts of jurisdiction, based on 

prudential concerns, over cases which would normally fall 

within their purview. National Treasury Employees Union v. 

United States, 101 F.3d 1423, 1427 (D.C. Cir. 1996). We do not 

disagree with Appellants’ assertion that we could resolve this 

case through treaty analysis and statutory construction, see 

Japan Whaling Ass’n v. American Cetacean Soc’y, 478 U.S. 

221, 230 (1986) (“[T]he courts have the authority to construe 

treaties and executive agreements, and it goes without saying 

that interpreting congressional legislation is a recurring and 

accepted task for the federal courts.”); we merely decline to do 

so as this case presents a political question which strips us of 

jurisdiction to undertake that otherwise familiar task. See 

Gonzalez-Vera v. Kissinger, 449 F.3d 1260, 1264 (D.C. Cir. 

2006) (“We need not quarrel with the plaintiffs’ assertion that 

certain claims for torture may be adjudicated in the federal 

courts as provided in the TVPA. We simply observe that such a 

claim, like any other, may not be heard if it presents a political 

question.”). 

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Once the Executive determines Taiwan’s sovereign, we can 

decide Appellants’ resulting status and concomitant rights 

expeditiously. Baker, 369 U.S. at 212 (“[T]he judiciary 

ordinarily follows the executive as to which nation has 

sovereignty over disputed territory, once sovereignty over an 

area is politically determined and declared, courts may examine 

the resulting status and decide independently whether a statute 

applies to that area.”). But for many years—indeed, as 

Appellants admit, since the signing of the SFPT itself—the 

Executive has gone out of its way to avoid making that 

determination, creating an information deficit for determining 

the status of the people on Taiwan. Appellants insist they do not 

ask the court to determine Taiwan’s sovereign; however, 

without knowing Appellants’ status, we cannot delineate 

Appellants’ resultant rights. 

Identifying Taiwan’s sovereign is an antecedent question to 

Appellants’ claims. This leaves the Court with few options. We 

could jettison the United States’ long-standing foreign policy 

regarding Taiwan—that of strategic ambiguity—in favor of 

declaring a sovereign. But that seems imprudent. Since no war 

powers have been delegated to the judiciary, judicial modesty as 

well as doctrine cautions us to abjure so provocative a course. 

Appellants attempt to side-step this fatal hurdle by asserting 

that, for the limited purpose of determining their status and 

rights under U.S. law, the issue of sovereignty is already 

decided under the SFPT. According to them, as the “principal 

occupying power” under the treaty, the United States retains 

temporary de jure sovereignty over Taiwan. Consequently, 

Appellants urge us to remember recognizing that the 

determination of sovereignty over an area is a political question 

“does not debar courts from examining the status resulting from 

prior action.” Vermilya-Brown Co. v. Connell, 335 U.S. 377, 

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380 (1948). True enough. However, under the interpretation of 

the political departments to whom we must defer in such 

matters, Pearcy v. Stranahan, 205 U.S. 257, 265 (1907) 

(deferring to “the interpretation which the political departments 

have put upon [a] treaty” when resolving a question of 

sovereignty), it remains unknown whether, by failing to 

designate a sovereign but listing the United States as the 

“principal occupying power,” the SFPT created any kind of 

sovereignty in the first place. Therefore, the “prior action” on 

which Appellants rely is not only an open question, but is in fact 

the same question Appellants insist they do not require this 

Court to answer: who is Taiwan’s sovereign? Appellants may 

even be correct; careful analysis of the SFPT might lead us to 

conclude the United States has temporary sovereignty. But we 

will never know, because the political question doctrine forbids 

us from commencing that analysis. We do not dictate to the 

Executive what governments serve as the supreme political 

authorities of foreign lands, Jones, 137 U.S. at 212; this rule 

applies a fortiori to determinations of U.S. sovereignty. 

Appellants query how the political question doctrine can 

bar their claims in light of the Supreme Court’s recent decision 

in Boumediene v. Bush, 128 S. Ct. 2229 (2008). They observe: 

If the United States Supreme Court can, during open 

hostilities, consider and rule on issues involving Congress, 

the Executive Branch and the United States Constitution in 

respect of the handling of alleged enemy aliens directly 

threatening the United States mainland, surely the 

interpretation of the SFPT and its legal effects upon 

Appellants under U.S. laws are properly within the courts’ 

purview. 

Appellants’ Br. 28. At first blush, it is difficult to challenge 

Appellants’ reasoning. In truth, one can understand the 

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perception that the Court in Boumediene went far beyond its 

historically limited role with respect to national security and 

foreign policy. See Schneider, 412 F.3d at 195 (Article III 

“provides no authority for policymaking in the realm of foreign 

relations or provision of national security. . . . [D]ecisionmaking in the areas of foreign policy and national security is 

textually committed to the political branches.”). Under 

precedent both de jure and de facto sovereignty are political 

questions—indeed, archetypal political questions. Oetjen v. 

Central Leather Co., 246 U.S. 297, 302 (1918). Still, to read 

Boumediene as Appellants suggest would call into question the 

continuing viability of the entire political question doctrine. We 

do not read Boumediene so broadly, particularly as the majority 

merely held it had authority to review enemy detentions under 

the Suspension Clause in those cases where de facto sovereignty 

is “uncontested.” Boumediene, 128 S. Ct. at 2247, 2252–53, 

2262. 

Even if we concluded (which we do not) that Boumediene 

abrogated sub silentio the political question doctrine as it relates 

to de facto sovereignty, no valid argument can be made that it 

did so in relation to determining de jure sovereignty, which is at 

issue here. The majority in Boumediene explained, “to hold that 

the present cases turn on the political question doctrine, we 

would be required first to accept the Government’s premise that 

de jure sovereignty is the touchstone of habeas corpus 

jurisdiction,” and then rejected that premise as “unfounded.” 

Boumediene, 128 S. Ct. at 2253. As counsel for the Government 

aptly put it at oral argument, the gravamen of the Court’s 

decision centered not on the de jure reach of the Constitution, 

but on the limitations that adhere to the United States’ actual 

exercise of power over non-citizens detained in a foreign 

territory. Appellants do not assert, nor could they, that the 

United States exercises actual control over the people on 

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Taiwan. Thus, to the extent relevant in this case, Boumediene 

left the political question doctrine intact. 

Finally, Appellants attempt to analogize the United States’ 

former relationship with the Philippines, after Spain ceded the 

Philippine Islands to the United States in 1898, to its current 

relationship with Taiwan. The comparison is inapposite. 

Congress, not a court, declared the Filipino population was 

“entitled to the protection of the United States” based on the 

United States’ sovereignty over the Philippines. See Rabang v. 

Boyd, 353 U.S. 427, 429 (1957). Later, Congress acknowledged 

“the final and complete withdrawal of American sovereignty 

over the Philippine Islands” and stripped the Filipino people of 

their non-citizen national status. Id. at 429–30. Therefore, 

unlike here, courts confronting claims involving the rights 

enjoyed by Filipinos had no need to determine sovereignty over 

the Philippine Islands. 

Appellants argue that, as in the Philippines, the people on 

Taiwan owe the United States “permanent allegiance” and, 

consequently, meet the definition of U.S. nationals. See 8 

U.S.C. § 1101(a)(22) (“The term ‘national of the United States’ 

means . . . a person who, though not a citizen of the United 

States, owes permanent allegiance to the United States.”). We 

join the majority of our colleagues and conclude manifestations 

of “permanent allegiance” do not, by themselves, render a 

person a U.S. national. See Marquez-Almanzar v. INS, 418 F.3d 

210, 218–19 (2d Cir. 2005) (holding “one cannot qualify as a 

U.S. national under 8 U.S.C. § 1101(a)(22)(B) by a 

manifestation of ‘permanent allegiance’ to the United 

States. . . . [T]he road to U.S. nationality runs through 

provisions detailed elsewhere in the Code, see 8 U.S.C. §§ 

1401–58, and those provisions indicate that the only ‘noncitizen nationals’ currently recognized by our law are persons 

deemed to be so under 8 U.S.C. § 1408.”); see also AbouUSCA Case #08-5078 Document #1174554 Filed: 04/07/2009 Page 10 of 11
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Haidar v. Gonzales, 437 F.3d 206, 207 (1st Cir. 2006) (“The 

overwhelming majority of circuit courts to consider the question 

have concluded that one can become a ‘national’ of the United 

States only by birth or by naturalization under the process set by 

Congress.”); Sebastian-Soler v. U.S. Att’y Gen., 409 F.3d 1280, 

1285–87 (11th Cir. 2005); Salim v. Ashcroft, 350 F.3d 307, 309–

10 (3d Cir. 2003); Perdomo-Padilla v. Ashcroft, 333 F.3d 964, 

972 (9th Cir. 2003). Moreover, Congress precisely defined a 

non-citizen national as, inter alia, a person “born in an outlying 

possession of the United States on or after the date of formal 

acquisition of such possession.” 8 U.S.C. § 1408. The term 

“outlying possessions of the United States” means American 

Samoa and Swains Island. Id. § 1101(a)(29). The definition 

does not include Taiwan. Id. Thus, attitudes of permanent 

allegiance do not help Appellants. 

III 

Addressing Appellants’ claims would require identification 

of Taiwan’s sovereign. The Executive Branch has deliberately 

remained silent on this issue and we cannot intrude on its 

decision. Therefore, as the district court correctly concluded, 

consideration of Appellants’ claims is barred by the political 

question doctrine. Accordingly, we affirm. 

 So ordered. 

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