Source: https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/387/253/
Timestamp: 2019-04-26 05:44:12+00:00

Document:
Under the Citizenship Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, a U.S. citizen cannot lose his or her citizenship unless he or she willingly surrenders it.
(b) The Fourteenth Amendment's provision that "All persons born or naturalized in the United States . . . are citizens of the United States . . ." completely controls the status of citizenship, and prevents the cancellation of petitioner's citizenship. Pp. 387 U. S. 262-268.
take away that citizenship once it has been acquired, petitioner contended that the only way he could lose his citizenship was by his own voluntary renunciation of it. Since the Government took the position that § 401(e) empowers it to terminate citizenship without the citizen's voluntary renunciation, petitioner argued that this section is prohibited by the Constitution. The District Court and the Court of Appeals, rejecting this argument, held that Congress has constitutional authority forcibly to take away citizenship for voting in a foreign country based on its implied power to regulate foreign affairs. Consequently, petitioner was held to have lost his American citizenship regardless of his intention not to give it up. This is precisely what this Court held in Perez v. Brownell, 356 U. S. 44.
citizenship. These cases, as well as many commentators, [Footnote 6] have cast great doubt upon the soundness of Perez. Under these circumstances, we granted certiorari to reconsider it, 385 U.S. 917. In view of the many recent opinions and dissents comprehensively discussing all the issues involved, [Footnote 7] we deem it unnecessary to treat this subject at great length.
"there is nothing in the . . . Fourteenth Amendment to warrant drawing from it a restriction upon the power otherwise possessed by Congress to withdraw citizenship,"
id. at 356 U. S. 58, n. 3, the majority specifically rejected the "notion that the power of Congress to terminate citizenship depends upon the citizen's assent," id. at 356 U. S. 61.
"The introduction of this article declares the opinion . . . that Congress could not declare the acts which should amount to a renunciation of citizenship; otherwise there would have been no necessity for this last resort. When it was settled that Congress could not declare that the acceptance of a pension or an office from a foreign Emperor amounted to a disfranchisement of the citizen, it must surely be conceded that they could not declare that any other act did. The cases to which their powers before this amendment confessedly did not extend are very strong, and induce a belief that Congress could not in any case declare the acts which should cause 'a person to cease to be a citizen.' The want of power in a case like this, where the individual has given the strongest evidence of attachment to a foreign potentate and an entire renunciation of the feelings and principles of an American citizen, certainly establishes the absence of all power to pass a bill like the present one. Although the intention with which it was introduced, and the title of the bill declare that it is to insure and foster the right of the citizen, the direct and inevitable effect of the bill, is an assumption of power by Congress to declare that certain acts when committed shall amount to a renunciation of citizenship."
31 Annals of Cong. 1038-1039 (1818).
"[A]llegiance imports an obligation on the citizen or subject, the correlative right to which resides in the sovereign power: allegiance in this country is not due to Congress, but to the people, with whom the sovereign power is found; it is, therefore, by the people only that any alteration can be made of the existing institutions with respect to allegiance."
essential to our notion of a Constitution, . . . it was this: that, while the employment of the physical force of the country is in the hands of the Legislature, those rules which determine what constitutes the rights of the citizen, shall be a matter of Constitutional provision."
"[The naturalized citizen] becomes a member of the society, possessing all the rights of a native citizen, and standing, in the view of the constitution, on the footing of a native. The constitution does not authorize Congress to enlarge or abridge those rights. The simple power of the national Legislature, is to prescribe a uniform rule of naturalization, and the exercise of this power exhausts it, so far as respects the individual."
as to whether prior to the passage of the Fourteenth Amendment Congress had the power to deprive a person against his will of citizenship, once obtained, should have been removed by the unequivocal terms of the Amendment itself. It provides its own constitutional rule in language calculated completely to control the status of citizenship: "All persons born or naturalized in the United States . . . are citizens of the United States. . . ." There is no indication in these words of a fleeting citizenship, good at the moment it is acquired but subject to destruction by the Government at any time. Rather the Amendment can most reasonably be read as defining a citizenship which a citizen keeps unless he voluntarily relinquishes it. Once acquired, this Fourteenth Amendment citizenship was not to be shifted, canceled, or diluted at the will of the Federal Government, the States, or any other governmental unit.
"It settles the great question of citizenship and removes all doubt as to what persons are or are not citizens of the United States. . . . We desired to put this question of citizenship and the rights of citizens . . . under the civil rights bill beyond the legislative power. . . ."
Cong.Globe, 39th Cong., 1st Sess., 2890, 2896 (1866).
"a party to the act dissolving the tie between the citizen and his country . . . where the statute simply prescribes the manner in which the citizen shall proceed to perpetuate the evidence of his intention, or election, to renounce his citizenship by expatriation."
"the true question is, that not only the right of expatriation, but the whole power of its exercise, rests solely and exclusively in the will of the individual,"
statesman, no intelligent legislator, no sound lawyer has ever maintained any such power in any branch of the Government. The lawless precedents created in the delirium of war . . . of sending men by force into exile, as a punishment for political opinion, were violations of this great law . . . of the Constitution. . . . The men who debated the question in 1818 failed to see the true distinction. . . . They failed to comprehend that it is not the Government, but that it is the individual, who has the right and the only power of expatriation. . . . [I]t belongs and appertains to the citizen, and not to the Government, and it is the evidence of his election to exercise his right, and not the power to control either the election or the right itself, which is the legitimate subject matter of legislation. There has been, and there can be, no legislation under our Constitution to control in any manner the right itself."
"Congress having no power to abridge the rights conferred by the Constitution upon those who have become naturalized citizens by virtue of acts of Congress, a fortiori no act . . . of Congress . . .
can affect citizenship acquired as a birthright, by virtue of the Constitution itself. . . . The Fourteenth Amendment, while it leaves the power where it was before, in Congress, to regulate naturalization, has conferred no authority upon Congress to restrict the effect of birth, declared by the Constitution to constitute a sufficient and complete right to citizenship."
Id. at 169 U. S. 703.
to be jeopardized any moment Congress decides to do so under the name of one of its general or implied grants of power. In some instances, loss of citizenship can mean that a man is left without the protection of citizenship in any country in the world -- as a man without a country. Citizenship in this Nation is a part of a cooperative affair. Its citizenry is the country, and the country is its citizenry. The very nature of our free government makes it completely incongruous to have a rule of law under which a group of citizens temporarily in office can deprive another group of citizens of their citizenship. We hold that the Fourteenth Amendment was designed to, and does, protect every citizen of this Nation against a congressional forcible destruction of his citizenship, whatever his creed, color, or race. Our holding does no more than to give to this citizen that which is his own, a constitutional right to remain a citizen in a free country unless he voluntarily relinquishes that citizenship.
"(e) Voting in a political election in a foreign state or participating in an election or plebiscite to determine the sovereignty over foreign territory."
This provision was reenacted as § 349(a)(5) of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952, 66 Stat. 267, 8 U.S.C. § 1481(a)(5).
"All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States. . . ."
250 F.Supp. 686; 361 F.2d 102, 105.
Trop v. Dulles, 356 U. S. 86; Nishikawa v. Dulles, 356 U. S. 129.
See, e.g., Agata, Involuntary Expatriation and Schneider v. Rusk, 27 U.Pitt.L.Rev. 1 (1965); Hurst, Can Congress Take Away Citizenship?, 29 Rocky Mt.L.Rev. 62 (1956); Kurland, Foreword: "Equal in Origin and Equal in Title to the Legislative and Executive Branches of the Government," 78 Harv.L.Rev. 143, 169-175 (1964); Comment, 56 Mich.L.Rev. 1142 (1958); Note, Forfeiture of Citizenship Through Congressional Enactments, 21 U.Cin.L.Rev. 59 (1952); 40 Cornell L.Q. 365 (1955); 25 S.Cal.L.Rev.196 (1952). But see, e.g., Comment, The Expatriation Act of 1954, 64 Yale L.J. 1164 (1955).
See Perez v. Brownell, supra, at 356 U. S. 62 (dissenting opinion of THE CHIEF JUSTICE), 356 U. S. 79 (dissenting opinion of MR. JUSTICE DOUGLAS); Trop v. Dulles, supra, at 356 U. S. 91-93 (part I of opinion of Court); Nishikawa v. Dulles, supra, at 356 U. S. 138 (concurring opinion of MR. JUSTICE BLACK).
For a history of the early American view of the right of expatriation, including these congressional proposals, see generally Roche, The Early Development of United States Citizenship (1949); Tsiang, The Question of Expatriation in America Prior to 1907 (1942); Dutcher, The Right of Expatriation, 11 Am.L.Rev. 447 (1877); Roche, The Loss of American Nationality -- The Development of Statutory Expatriation, 99 U.Pa.L.Rev. 25 (1950); Slaymaker, The Right of the American Citizen to Expatriate, 37 Am.L.Rev.191 (1903).
4 Annals of Cong. 1005, 102-1030 (1794); 7 Annals of Cong. 349 et seq. (1797).
See, e.g., 3 U. S. Janson, 3 Dall. 133.
31 Annals of Cong. 495 (1817).
Id. at 1036-1037, 1058 (1818). Although some of the opponents, believing that citizenship was derived from the States, argued that any power to prescribe the mode for its relinquishment rested in the States, they were careful to point out that "the absence of all power from the State Legislatures would not vest it in us." Id. at 1039.
The amendment had been proposed by the 11th Cong., 2d Sess. See The Constitution of the United States of America, S.Doc. No. 39, 88th Cong., 1st Sess., 77-78 (1964).
Id. at 1071. It is interesting to note that the proponents of the bill, such as Congressman Cobb of Georgia, considered it to be "the simple declaration of the manner in which a voluntary act, in the exercise of a natural right, may be performed" and denied that it created or could lead to the creation of "a presumption of relinquishment of the right of citizenship." Id. at 1068.
The dissenting opinion here points to the fact that a Civil War Congress passed two Acts designed to deprive military deserters to the Southern side of the rights of citizenship. Measures of this kind passed in those days of emotional stress and hostility are by no means the most reliable criteria for determining what the Constitution means.
Cong.Globe, 39th Cong., 1st Sess., 2768-2769, 2869, 2890 et seq. (1866). See generally, Flack, Adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment 88-94 (1908).
"So long as a citizen does not expressly dissolve his allegiance and does not swear allegiance to another country his citizenship remains in statu quo, unaltered and unimpaired."
Proposals of Representatives Pruyn of New York (id. at 1130) and Van Trump of Ohio (id. at 1801, 2311).
While Van Trump disagreed with the 1818 opponents as to whether Congress had power to prescribe a means of voluntary renunciation of citizenship, he wholeheartedly agreed with their premise that the right of expatriation belongs to the citizen, not to the Government, and that the Constitution forbids the Government from being party to the act of expatriation. Van Trump simply thought that the opponents of the 1818 proposal failed to recognize that their mutual premise would not be violated by an Act which merely prescribed "how . . . [the rights of citizenship] might be relinquished at the option of the person in whom they were vested." Cong.Globe, 40th Cong., 2d Sess., 1804 (1868).
"It is a subject which, in our opinion, ought not to be legislated upon. . . . [T]his comes within the scope and character of natural rights which no Government has the right to control and which no Government can confer. And wherever this subject is alluded to in the Constitution -- . . . it is in the declaration that Congress shall have no power whatever to legislate upon these matters."
15 Stat. 223, R.S. § 1999.
Some have referred to this part. of the decision as a holding, see, e.g., Hurst, supra, 29 Rocky Mt.L.Rev. at 779; Comment, 56 Mich.L.Rev. at 1153-1154; while others have referred to it as obiter dictum, see, e.g., Roche, supra, 99 U.Pa.L.Rev. at 26-27. Whichever it was, the statement was evidently the result of serious consideration, and is entitled to great weight.
Of course, as THE CHIEF JUSTICE said in his dissent, 356 U.S. at 356 U. S. 66, naturalization unlawfully procured can be set aside. See, e.g., Knauer v. United States, 328 U. S. 654; Baumgartner v. United States, 322 U. S. 665; Schneiderman v. United States, 320 U. S. 118.
purposeful voting in a foreign political election to be such an act.
and the purpose" of the Citizenship Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment; in explanation, the Court offers only the terms of the clause itself, the contention that any other result would be "completely incongruous," and the essentially arcane observation that the "citizenry is the country and the country is its citizenry."
I can find nothing in this extraordinary series of circumventions which permits, still less compels, the imposition of this constitutional constraint upon the authority of Congress. I must respectfully dissent.
restraints that should surround the judicial invalidation of an Act of Congress, even seems to confirm Perez' soundness.
Not much evidence is available from the period prior to the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment through which the then-prevailing attitudes on these constitutional questions can now be determined. The questions pertinent here were only tangentially debated; controversy centered instead upon the wider issues of whether a citizen might under any circumstances renounce his citizenship, and, if he might, whether that right should be conditioned upon any formal prerequisites. [Footnote 2/3] Even the discussion of these issues was seriously clouded by the widely accepted view that authority to regulate the incidents of citizenship had been retained, at least in part, by the several States. [Footnote 2/4] It should therefore be remembered that the evidence which is now available may not necessarily represent any carefully considered, still less prevailing, viewpoint upon the present issues.
legislation proposed in 1794, 1797, and 1818, and upon an isolated dictum from the opinion of Chief Justice Marshall in Osborn v. Bank of the United States, 9 Wheat. 738. This, as will appear, is entirely inadequate to support the Court's conclusion, particularly in light of other and more pertinent evidence which the Court does not notice.
vote, and no analogous proposal was offered in the Senate. Insofar as this brief exchange is pertinent here, it establishes, at most, that two or more members believed the proposal both constitutional and desirable, and that some larger number determined, for reasons that are utterly obscure, that it should not be adopted.
The Court next relies upon the rejection of proposed legislation in 1797. The bill there at issue would have forbidden the entry of American citizens into the service of any foreign state in time of war; its sixth section included machinery by which a citizen might voluntarily expatriate himself. [Footnote 2/7] The bill contained nothing which would have expatriated unwilling citizens, and the debates do not include any pronouncements relevant to that issue. It is difficult to see how the failure of that bill might be probative here.
"The relation to the State government was the basis of the relation to the General Government, and therefore, as long as a man continues a citizen of a State, he must be considered a citizen of the United States. [Footnote 2/10]"
and undesirable. Pindall of Virginia, for example, asserted that a citizen who employed its provisions would have "motives of idleness or criminality," [Footnote 2/12] and that the bill would thus cause "much evil." [Footnote 2/13] McLane of Delaware feared that citizens would use the bill to escape service in the armed forces in time of war; he warned that the bill would, moreover, weaken "the love of country so necessary to individual happiness and national prosperity." [Footnote 2/14] He even urged that "The commission of treason, and the objects of plunder and spoil, are equally legalized by this bill." [Footnote 2/15] Lowndes of South Carolina cautioned the House that difficulties might again arise with foreign governments over the rights of seamen if the bill were passed. [Footnote 2/16] Given these vigorous and repeated arguments, it is quite impossible to assume, as the Court apparently has, that any substantial portion of the House was motivated wholly, or even in part, by any particular set of constitutional assumptions. These three statements must, instead, be taken as representative only of the beliefs of three members, premised chiefly upon constitutional doctrines which have subsequently been rejected, and expressed in a debate in which the present issues were not directly involved.
here. The central issue before the Court in Osborn was the right of the bank to bring its suit for equitable relief in the courts of the United States. In argument, counsel for Osborn had asserted that, although the bank had been created by the laws of the United States, it did not necessarily follow that any cause involving the bank had arisen under those laws. Counsel urged by analogy that the naturalization of an alien might as readily be said to confer upon the new citizen a right to bring all his actions in the federal courts. Id. at 813-814 [argument of counsel omitted from electronic version]. Not surprisingly, the Court rejected the analogy, and remarked that an act of naturalization "does not proceed to give, to regulate, or to prescribe his capacities," since the Constitution demands that a naturalized citizen must in all respects stand "on the footing of a native." Id. at 22 U. S. 827. The Court plainly meant no more than that counsel's analogy is broken by Congress' inability to offer a naturalized citizen rights or capacities which differ in any particular from those given to a native-born citizen by birth. Mr. Justice Johnson's discussion of the analogy in dissent confirms the Court's purpose. Id. at 22 U. S. 875-876.
"the dominant Jeffersonian view held that citizenship was within the jurisdiction of the states; a statute would thus have been a federal usurpation of state power. [Footnote 2/22]"
1818; the statements from that debate set out in the opinion for the Court were, as I have noted, bottomed on the reasoning that, since allegiance given by an individual to a State could not be dissolved by Congress, a federal statute could not regulate expatriation. It surely follows that this "obscure enterprise" [Footnote 2/23] in 1810, motivated by now discredited constitutional premises, cannot offer any significant guidance for solution of the important issues now before us.
The most pertinent evidence from this period upon these questions has been virtually overlooked by the Court. Twice in the two years immediately prior to its passage of the Fourteenth Amendment, Congress exercised the very authority which the Court now suggests that it should have recognized was entirely lacking. In each case, a bill was debated and adopted by both Houses which included provisions to expatriate unwilling citizens.
"every person who shall hereafter hold or exercise any office . . . in the rebel service . . . is hereby declared not to be a citizen of .the United States. [Footnote 2/24]"
impermissible. [Footnote 2/30] Significantly, however, it was never suggested in either debate that expatriation without a citizen's consent lay beyond Congress' authority. Members of both Houses had apparently examined intensively the section's constitutional validity, and yet had been undisturbed by the matters upon which the Court now relies.
Some doubt, based on the phrase "rights of citizenship," has since been expressed [Footnote 2/31] that § 21 was intended to require any more than disfranchisement, but this is, for several reasons, unconvincing. First, § 21 also explicitly provided that persons subject to its provisions should not thereafter exercise various "rights of citizens"; [Footnote 2/32] if the section had not been intended to cause expatriation, it is difficult to see why these additional provisions would have been thought necessary. Second, the executive authorities of the United States afterwards consistently construed the section as causing expatriation. [Footnote 2/33] Third, the section was apparently understood by various courts to result in expatriation; in particular, Mr. Justice Strong, while a member of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, construed the section to cause a "forfeiture of citizenship," Huber v. Reily, 53 Pa. 112, 118, and although this point was not expressly reached, his general understanding of the statute was approved by this Court in Kurtz v. Moffitt, 115 U. S. 487, 115 U. S. 501. Finally, Congress in 1867 approved an exemption from the section's provisions for those who had deserted after the termination of general hostilities, and the statute as adopted specifically described the disability from which exemption was given as a "loss of his citizenship."
It thus appears that Congress had twice, immediately before its passage of the Fourteenth Amendment, unequivocally affirmed its belief that it had authority to expatriate an unwilling citizen.
The pertinent evidence for the period prior to the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment can therefore be summarized as follows. The Court's conclusion today is supported only by the statements, associated at least in part with a now abandoned view of citizenship, of three individual Congressmen, and by the ambiguous and inapposite dictum from Osborn. Inconsistent with the Court's position are statements from individual Congressmen in 1794, and Congress' passage in 1864 and 1865 of legislation which expressly authorized the expatriation of unwilling citizens. It may be that legislation adopted in the heat of war should be discounted in part by its origins, but, even if this is done, it is surely plain that the Court's conclusion is entirely unwarranted by the available historical evidence for the period prior to the passage of the Fourteenth Amendment. The evidence suggests, to the contrary, that Congress in 1865 understood that it had authority, at least in some circumstances, to deprive a citizen of his nationality.
of Michigan, the sponsor of the Citizenship Clause in the Senate, and of a statement made in a debate in the House of Representatives in 1868 by Van Trump of Ohio. Measured most generously, this evidence would be inadequate to support the important constitutional conclusion presumably drawn in large part from it by the Court; but, as will be shown, other relevant evidence indicates that the Court plainly has mistaken the purposes of the clause's draftsmen.
whom citizenship initially adhered, thus overturning the restrictions both of Dred Scott and of the doctrine of primary state citizenship, while preserving Congress' authority to prescribe the methods and terms of expatriation.
"This amendment [the Citizenship Clause] which I have offered is simply declaratory of what I regard as the law of the land already, that every person born within the limits of the United States, and subject to their jurisdiction, is . . . a citizen of the United States. [Footnote 2/44]"
Howard was a member of the Senate when both bills were passed, and had actively participated in the debates upon the Enrollment Act. [Footnote 2/46] Although his views of the two expatriation measures were not specifically recorded, Howard certainly never expressed to the Senate any doubt either of their wisdom or of their constitutionality. It would be extraordinary if these prominent supporters of the Citizenship Clause could have imagined, as the Court's construction of the clause now demands, that the clause was only "declaratory" of the law "where it now is," and yet that it would entirely withdraw a power twice recently exercised by Congress in their presence.
"I take it for granted that, after a man becomes a citizen of the United States under the Constitution, he cannot cease to be citizen except by expatriation or the commission of some crime by which his citizenship shall be forfeited. [Footnote 2/47]"
"primarily to assail the conduct of the British Government [chiefly for its acts toward naturalized Americans resident in Ireland] and to declare the right of naturalized Americans to renounce their native allegiance; [Footnote 2/52]"
interstitial comments, that they understood Congress to have authority to expatriate unwilling citizens, [Footnote 2/53] but ,in general, both the issues now before the Court and questions of the implications of the Citizenship Clause were virtually untouched in the debates.
Further, the executive authorities of the United States repeatedly acted, in the 40 years following 1868, upon the premise that a citizen might automatically be deemed to have expatriated himself by conduct short of a voluntary renunciation of citizenship; individual citizens were, as the Court indicated in Perez, regularly held on this basis to have lost their citizenship. Interested Members of Congress, and others, could scarcely have been unaware of the practice; as early as 1874, President Grant urged Congress in his Sixth Annual Message to supplement the Act of 1868 with a statutory declaration of the acts by which a citizen might "be deemed to have renounced or to have lost his citizenship." [Footnote 2/60] It was the necessity to provide a more satisfactory basis for this practice that led first to the appointment of the Citizenship Board of 1906, and subsequently to the Nationality Acts of 1907 and 1940. The administrative practice in this period was described by the Court in Perez; it suffices here merely to emphasize that the Court today has not ventured to explain why the Citizenship Clause should, so shortly after its adoption, have been, under the Court's construction, so seriously misunderstood.
as indeed the Court recognizes; the evidence, to the contrary, irresistibly suggests that the draftsmen of the Fourteenth Amendment did not intend, and could not have expected, that the Citizenship Clause would deprive Congress of authority which it had, to their knowledge, only recently twice exercised. The construction demanded by the pertinent historical evidence, and entirely consistent with the clause's terms and purposes, is instead that it declares to whom citizenship, as a consequence either of birth or of naturalization, initially attaches. The clause thus served at the time of its passage both to overturn Dred Scott and to provide a foundation for federal citizenship entirely independent of state citizenship; in this fashion it effectively guaranteed that the Amendment's protection would not subsequently be withheld from those for whom it was principally intended. But nothing in the history, purposes, or language of the clause suggests that it forbids Congress in all circumstances to withdraw the citizenship of an unwilling citizen. To the contrary, it was expected, and should now be understood, to leave Congress at liberty to expatriate a citizen if the expatriation is an appropriate exercise of a power otherwise given to Congress by the Constitution, and if the methods and terms of expatriation adopted by Congress are consistent with the Constitution's other relevant commands.
upon legislative authority. The construction now placed on the Citizenship Clause rests, in the last analysis, simply on the Court's ipse dixit, evincing little more, it is quite apparent, than the present majority's own distaste for the expatriation power.
I believe that Perez was rightly decided, and on its authority would affirm the judgment of the Court of Appeals.
It is appropriate to note at the outset what appears to be a fundamental ambiguity in the opinion for the Court. The Court at one point intimates, but does not expressly declare, that it adopts the reasoning of the dissent of THE CHIEF JUSTICE in Perez. THE CHIEF JUSTICE there acknowledged that "actions in derogation of undivided allegiance to this country" had "long been recognized" to result in expatriation, id. at 356 U. S. 68; he argued, however, that the connection between voting in a foreign political election and abandonment of citizenship was logically insufficient to support a presumption that a citizen had renounced his nationality. Id. at 356 U. S. 76. It is difficult to find any semblance of this reasoning, beyond the momentary reference to the opinion of THE CHIEF JUSTICE, in the approach taken by the Court today; it seems instead to adopt a substantially wider view of the restrictions upon Congress' authority in this area. Whatever the Court's position, it has assumed that voluntariness is here a term of fixed meaning; in fact, of course, it has been employed to describe both a specific intent to renounce citizenship and the uncoerced commission of an act conclusively deemed by law to be a relinquishment of citizenship. Until the Court indicates with greater precision what it means by "assent," today's opinion will surely cause still greater confusion in this area of the law.
It is useful, however, to reiterate the essential facts of this case, for the Court's very summary statement might unfortunately cause confusion about the situation to which § 401(e) was here applied. Petitioner emigrated from the United States to Israel in 1950, and, although the issue was not argued at any stage of these proceedings, it was assumed by the District Court that he "has acquired Israeli citizenship." 250 F.Supp. 686, 687. He voted in the election for the Israeli Knesset in 1951, and, as his Israeli Identification Booklet indicates, in various political elections which followed. Transcript of Record 1-2. In 1960, after 10 years in Israel, petitioner determined to return to the United States, and applied to the United States Consulate in Haifa for a passport. The application was rejected, and a Certificate of Loss of Nationality, based entirely on his participation in the 1951 election, was issued. Petitioner's action for declaratory judgment followed. There is, as the District Court noted, "no claim by the [petitioner] that the deprivation of his American citizenship will render him a stateless person." Ibid.
See generally Tsiang, The Question of Expatriation in America Prior to 1907, 25-70; Roche, The Expatriation Cases, 1963 Sup.Ct.Rev. 325, 327-330; Roche, Loss of American Nationality, 4 West.Pol.Q. 268.
Roche, The Expatriation Cases, 1963 Sup.Ct.Rev. 325, 329. Although the evidence, which consists principally of a letter to Albert Gallatin, is rather ambiguous, Jefferson apparently believed even that a state expatriation statute could deprive a citizen of his federal citizenship. 1 Writings of Albert Gallatin 301-302 (Adams ed. 1879). His premise was presumably that state citizenship was primary, and that federal citizenship attached only through it. See Tsiang, supra, at 25. Gallatin's own views have been described as essentially "states' rights"; see Roche, Loss of American Nationality, 4 West.Pol.Q. 268, 271.
See 4 Annals of Cong. 1004 et seq.
The discussion and rejection of the amendment are cursorily reported at 4 Annals of Cong. 1028-1030.
The sixth section is set out at 7 Annals of Cong. 349.
The bill is summarized at 31 Annals of Cong. 495.
31 Annals of Cong. 1046.
31 Annals of Cong. 1057.
Ibid. Roche describes the Congressmen upon whom the Court chiefly relies as "the states' rights opposition." Loss of American Nationality, 4 West.Pol.Q. 268, 276.
31 Annals of Cong. 1047.
31 Annals of Cong. 1050.
31 Annals of Cong. 1059.
31 Annals of Cong. 1051.
Similarly, the Court can obtain little support from its invocation of the dictum from the opinion for the Court in United States v. Wong Kim Ark, 169 U. S. 649, 169 U. S. 703. The central issue there was whether a child born of Chinese nationals domiciled in the United States is an American citizen if its birth occurs in this country. The dictum upon which the Court relies, which consists essentially of a reiteration of the dictum from Osborn, can therefore scarcely be considered a reasoned consideration of the issues now before the Court. Moreover, the dictum could conceivably be read to hold only that no power to expatriate an unwilling citizen was conferred either by the Naturalization Clause or by the Fourteenth Amendment; if the dictum means no more, it would, of course, not even reach the holding in Perez. Finally, the dictum must be read in light of the subsequent opinion for the Court, written by Mr. Justice McKenna, in Mackenzie v. Hare, 239 U. S. 299. Despite counsel's invocation of Wong Kim Ark, id. at 302 and 303 [argument of counsel -- omitted], the Court held in Mackenzie that marriage between an American citizen and an alien, unaccompanied by any intention of the citizen to renounce her citizenship, nonetheless permitted Congress to withdraw her nationality. It is immaterial for these purposes that Mrs. Mackenzie's citizenship might, under the statute there, have been restored upon termination of the marital relationship; she did not consent to the loss, even temporarily, of her citizenship, and, under the proposition apparently urged by the Court today, it can therefore scarcely matter that her expatriation was subject to some condition subsequent. It seems that neither Mr. Justice McKenna, who became a member of the Court after the argument but before the decision of Wong Kim Ark, supra, at 169 U. S. 732, nor Mr. Chief Justice White, who joined the Court's opinions in both Wong Kim Ark and Mackenzie, thought that Wong Kim Ark required the result reached by the Court today. Nor, it must be supposed, did the other six members of the Court who joined Mackenzie, despite Wong Kim Ark.
The various revisions of the proposed amendment may be traced through 20 Annals of Cong. 530, 549, 572-573, 635, 671.
Ames, The Proposed Amendments to the Constitution of the United States during the First Century of Its History, 2 Ann.Rep.Am.Hist.Assn. for the Year 1896, 188.
Ames, supra, at 187, speculates that the presence of Jerome Bonaparte in this country some few years earlier might have caused apprehension, and concludes that the amendment was merely an expression of "animosity against foreigners." Id.. at 188.
Roche, The Expatriation Cases, 1963 Sup.Ct.Rev. 325, 335.
6 Richardson, Messages and Papers of the Presidents 226.
See, e.g., the comments of Senator Brown of Missouri, Cong.Globe, 38th Cong., 1st Sess., 3460.
Lincoln indicated that, although he was "unprepared" to be "inflexibly committed" to "any single plan of restoration," he was "fully satisfied" with the bill's provisions. 6 Richardson, Messages and Papers of the Presidents 222-223.
Roche, The Expatriation Cases, 1963 Sup.Ct.Rev. 325, 343.
13 Stat. 490. It was this provision that, after various recodifications, was held unconstitutional by this Court in Trop v. Dulles, 356 U. S. 86. A majority of the Court did not there hold that the provision was invalid because Congress lacked all power to expatriate an unwilling citizen. In any event, a judgment by this Court 90 years after the Act's passage can scarcely reduce the Act's evidentiary value for determining whether Congress understood in 1865, as the Court now intimates that it did, that it lacked such power.
Cong.Globe, 38th Cong., 2d Sess., 642-643, 1155-1156.
Roche, The Expatriation Cases, 1963 Sup.Ct.Rev. 325, 336.
Hearings before House Committee on Immigration and Naturalization on H.R. 6127, 76th Cong., 1st Sess., 38.
See, e.g., the remarks of Senator Hendricks, Cong.Globe, 40th Cong., 1st Sess., 661.
The pertinent events are described in Flack, Adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment 83-94.
Cong.Globe, 39th cong., 1st Sess., 2560.
Wade would have employed the formula "persons born in the United States or naturalized under the laws thereof" to measure the sections protection. Cong.Globe, 39th Cong., 1st Sess., 2768-2769.
81 Cong.Globe, 39th Cong., 1st Sess., 2869. The precise terms of the discussion in the caucus were, and have remained, unknown. For contemporary comment, see Cong.Globe, 39th Cong., 1st Sess., 2939.
Scott v. Sandford, 19 How. 393.
Cong.Globe, 39th Cong., 1st Sess., 2768.
See, e.g., the comments of Senator Johnson of Maryland, Cong.Globe, 39th Cong., 1st Sess., 2893. It was subsequently acknowledged by several members of this Court that a central purpose of the Citizenship Clause was to create an independent basis of federal citizenship, and thus to overturn the doctrine of primary state citizenship. The Slaughter-House Cases, 16 Wall. 36, 83 U. S. 74, 83 U. S. 95, 83 U. S. 112. The background of this issue is traced in tenBroek, The Anti-slavery Origins of the Fourteenth Amendment 71-93.
Cong.Globe, 39th Cong., 1st Sess., 3031. See also Flack, The Adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment 93. In the same fashion, tenBroek, supra, at 215-217, concludes that the whole of § 1 was "declaratory and confirmatory." Id. at 217.
Cong.Globe, 39th Cong., 1st Sess., 2890. See also the statement of Congressman Baker, Cong.Globe, 39th Cong., 1st Sess., App. 255, 256. Similarly, two months after the Amendment's passage through Congress, Senator Lane of Indiana remarked that the clause was "simply a re-affirmation" of the declaratory citizenship section of the Civil Rights Bill. Fairman, Does the Fourteenth Amendment Incorporate the Bill of Rights? 2 Stan.L.Rev. 5, 74.
Senator Henderson participated in the debates upon the Enrollment Act and expressed no doubts about the constitutionality of § 21, Cong.Globe, 38th Cong., 2d Sess., 641, but the final vote upon the measure in the Senate was not recorded. Cong.Globe, 38th Cong., 2d Sess., 643.
See, e.g., Cong.Globe, 38th Cong., 2d Sess., 632.
Cong.Globe, 39th Cong., 1st Sess., 2895.
"prominent feature of the first [section] is, that it settles definitely the right of citizenship in the several States, . . . thereby depriving them in the future of all discretionary power over the subject within their respective limits, and with reference to their State Governments proper."
Ga.Sen. J. 6 (1866). See also the message of Governor Cox to the Ohio Legislature, Fairman, supra, 2 Stan.L.Rev. at 96, and the message of Governor Fletcher to the Missouri Legislature, Mo.Sen.J. 14 (1867). In combination, this evidence again suggests that the Citizenship Clause was expected merely to declare to whom citizenship initially attaches, and to overturn the doctrine of primary state citizenship.
Senator Hendricks, for example, lamented its unfairness, declared that its presence was an "embarrassment" to the country, and asserted that it "is not required any longer." Cong.Globe, 40th Cong., 1st Sess., 660-661.
Similarly, in 1885, this Court construed § 21 without any apparent indication that the section was, or had ever been thought to be, beyond Congress' authority. Kurtz v. Moffitt, 115 U. S. 487, 115 U. S. 501-502.
Tsiang, supra, n. 3, at 95. President Johnson emphasized in his Third Annual Message the difficulties which were then prevalent. 6 Richardson, Messages and Papers of the Presidents 558, 580-581.
Tsiang, supra, at 95. See also 3 Moore, Digest of International Law 579-580.
See, e.g., Cong.Globe, 40th Cong., 2d Sess., 968, 1129-1131.
Van Trump's proposal contained nothing which would have expatriated any unwilling citizen, see Cong.Globe, 40th Cong., 2d Sess., 1801; its ultimate failure therefore cannot, despite the Court's apparent suggestion, help to establish that the House supposed that legislation similar to that at issue here was impermissible under the Constitution.
Cong.Globe, 40th Cong., 2d Sess., 1800-1805.
It should be noted that Van Trump, far from a "framer" of the Amendment, had not even been a member of the Congress which adopted it. Biographical Directory of the American Congress 1774-1961, H.R.Doc. No. 442, 85th Cong., 2d Sess., 1750.
As General Banks, the Chairman of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, carefully emphasized, the debates were intended simply to produce a declaration of the obligation of the United States to compel other countries "to consider the rights of our citizens and to bring the matter to negotiation and settlement"; the bill's proponents stood "for that and nothing more." Cong.Globe, 40th Cong., 2d Sess., 2315.
The first such treaty was that with the North German Union, concluded February 22, 1868, and ratified by the Senate on March 26, 1868. 2 Malloy, Treaties, Conventions, International Acts, Protocols and Agreements between the United States and other Powers 1298. Similar treaties were reached in 1868 with Bavaria, Baden, Belgium, Hesse, and Wurttemberg; a treaty was reached in 1869 with Norway and Sweden. An analogous treaty was made with Mexico in 1868, but, significantly, it permitted rebuttal of the presumption of renunciation of citizenship. See generally Tsiang, supra, at 88.
The relevance of these treaties was certainly not overlooked in the debates in the Senate upon the Act of 1868. See, e.g., Cong.Globe, 40th Cong., 2d Sess., 4205, 4211, 4329, 4331. Senator Howard attacked the treaties, but employed none of the reasons which might be suggested by the opinion for the Court today. Id. at 4211.
7 Richardson, Messages and Papers of the Presidents 284, 291. See further Borchard, Diplomatic Protection of Citizens Abroad §§ 319, 324, 325.

References: § 401
 v. 
 § 349
 § 1481
 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 § 1999
 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 § 21
 § 21
 v. 
 v. 
 § 401
 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 § 1
 § 21
 § 21
 v.