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18  AGENCY FOR INT’L DEVELOPMENT v. ALLIANCE FOR 

OPEN SOCIETY INT’L, INC. 
BREYER, J., dissenting 

Boumediene, we rejected the Government’s argument that
our decision in Johnson v. Eisentrager, 339 U. S. 763 (1950),
“adopted a formalistic” test “for determining the reach” of
constitutional protection to foreign citizens on foreign soil. 
553 U. S., at 762.  This is to say, we rejected the position
that the majority propounds today.  See ante, at 4, and n. 
(quoting Eisentrager at length).  Its “constricted reading” of 
Eisentrager  and  our  other  precedents  is  not  the  law.    See 
Boumediene, 553 U. S., at 764; see also, e.g., Neuman, Un-
derstanding Global Due Process, 23 Geo. Immigration L. J.
365, 400 (2009) (describing our cases as rejecting any abso-
lute view).

The  law,  we  confirmed  in  Boumediene,  is  that  constitu-
tional “questions of extraterritoriality turn on objective fac-
tors  and  practical  concerns”  present  in  a  given  case,  “not
formalism”  of  the  sort  the  majority  invokes  today.    553 
U. S.,  at  764.    Those  considerations  include  the  extent  of 
de facto U. S. Government control (if any) over foreign ter-
ritory.  See ante, at 4.  But they also include the nature of 
the constitutional protection sought, how feasible extending 
it would be in a given case, and the foreign citizen’s status 
vis-à-vis the United States, among other pertinent circum-
stances that might arise.  553 U. S., at 766; see also United 
States v. Verdugo-Urquidez, 494 U. S. 259, 278 (1990) (Ken-
nedy,  J.,  concurring)  (providing  the  decisive  fifth  vote  for 
rejecting  a  foreign  citizen’s  claim  to  constitutional  protec-
tion on foreign soil outside U. S. control because “[t]he con-
ditions and considerations of this case would make adher-
ence  to  the  Fourth  Amendment’s  warrant  requirement
impracticable  and  anomalous”  (emphasis  added)).    Our 
precedents reject absolutism.  Indeed, even our most sweep-
ing  statements  about  foreign  citizens’  (lack of )  constitu-
tional rights while outside U. S. Territory have come with 
limits.  See,  e.g.,  Landon  v.  Plasencia,  459  U. S.  21,  32 
(1982) (noting that “an alien seeking initial admission to”