Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/16pdf/16-309_h31i.pdf
Page Number: 9

Cite as:  582 U. S. ____ (2017) 

5 

Opinion of the Court 

word, citizenship).  The adverbial phrase “contrary to law,”
wedged  in  between  “procure”  and  “naturalization,”  then
specifies  how  a  person  must  procure  naturalization  so  as 
to run afoul of the statute: in contravention of the law—or, 
in a word, illegally.  Putting the pieces together, someone 
“procure[s],  contrary  to  law,  naturalization”  when  she 
obtains citizenship illegally. 

What,  then,  does  that  whole  phrase  mean?  The  most 
natural  understanding  is  that  the  illegal  act  must  have 
somehow  contributed  to  the  obtaining  of  citizenship.
Consider  if  someone  said  to  you:  “John  obtained  that 
painting illegally.”  You might imagine that he stole it off 
the  walls  of  a  museum.  Or  that  he  paid  for  it  with  a 
forged  check.   Or  that  he  impersonated  the  true  buyer
when the auction house delivered it.  But in all events, you 
would  imagine  illegal  acts  in  some  kind  of  means-end 
relation—or  otherwise  said,  in  some  kind  of  causal  rela-
tion—to the painting’s acquisition.  If someone said to you, 
“John  obtained  that  painting  illegally,  but  his  unlawful 
acts  did  not  play  any  role  in  his  obtaining  it,”  you  would 
not  have  a  clue  what  the  statement  meant.    You  would 
think  it  nonsense—or  perhaps  the  opening  of  a  riddle. 
That  is  because  if  no  illegal  act  contributed  at  all  to  get-
ting  the  painting,  then  the  painting  would  not  have  been
gotten illegally.  And the same goes for naturalization.  If 
whatever  illegal  conduct  occurring  within  the  naturaliza-
tion  process  was  a  causal  dead-end—if,  so  to  speak,  the
ripples  from  that  act  could  not  have  reached  the  decision
to  award  citizenship—then  the  act  cannot  support  a 
charge that the applicant obtained naturalization illegally. 
The conduct, though itself illegal, would not also make the 
obtaining of citizenship so.  To get citizenship unlawfully,
we  understand,  is  to  get  it  through  an  unlawful  means—
and  that  is  just  to  say  that  an  illegality  played  some  role