Source: https://case-law.vlex.com/vid/372-u-s-144-606622366
Timestamp: 2019-11-21 00:27:40
Document Index: 288170360

Matched Legal Cases: ['§ 2282', '§ 401', '§ 11', '§ 401', '§ 401', '§ 401']

372 U.S. 144 (1963), 2, Kennedy v. Mendoza-Martinez - Federal Cases - Case Law - VLEX 606622366
Docket Nº: [83 S.Ct. 556] No. 2
Citation: 372 U.S. 144, 83 S.Ct. 554, 9 L.Ed.2d 644
Party Name: Kennedy v. Mendoza-Martinez
83 S.Ct. 554, 9 L.Ed.2d 644
[83 S.Ct. 556]
Held: The judgments are affirmed. Pp. 146-186.
1. Although Mendoza-Martinez amended his complaint so as to add a prayer for injunctive relief before the third trial of his case by a single-judge District Court, it is clear from the trial record that the issues were framed and the case handled so as actually not to contemplate any injunctive relief. In these circumstances, it was not necessary for the case to be heard by a three-judge District Court convened pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 2282. Pp. 152-155.
departing from or remaining outside of the jurisdiction of the United States in time of war or . . . national emergency for the purpose of evading or avoiding training and service
in the Nation's armed forces, are unconstitutional, because they are essentially penal in character and would inflict severe punishment without due process of law and without the safeguards which must attend a criminal prosecution under the Fifth and Sixth Amendments. Pp. 159-186.
(b) It is conceded that §§ 401(j) and 349(a)(10) would automatically strip an American of his citizenship, without any administrative or judicial proceedings whatever, whenever he departs from or remains outside the jurisdiction of this country for the purpose of evading his military obligations. Pp. 166-167.
192 F.Supp. 1 and 187 F.Supp. 683, affirmed.
We are called upon in these two cases to decide the grave and fundamental problem, common to both, of the constitutionality of Acts of Congress which divest an American of his citizenship for "[d]eparting from or remaining outside of the jurisdiction of the United States in time of war or . . . national emergency for the purpose of evading or avoiding training and service" in the Nation's armed forces.1
The facts of both cases are not in dispute. Mendoza-Martinez, the appellee in No. 2, was born in this country in 1922, and therefore acquired American citizenship by birth. By reason of his parentage, he also, under Mexican law, gained Mexican citizenship, thereby possessing dual nationality. In 1942, he departed from this country and went to Mexico, solely, as he admits, for the purpose of evading military service in our armed forces. He concedes that he remained there for that sole purpose until November, 1946, when he voluntarily returned to this country. In 1947, in the United States District Court for the Southern District of California, he pleaded guilty to and was convicted of evasion of his service obligations in violation of § 11 of the Selective Training and Service Act of 1940.2 He served the imposed sentence of a year and a day. For all that appears in the record, he was, upon his release, allowed to reside undisturbed in this country until
1953, when, after a lapse of five years, he was served with a warrant of arrest in deportation proceedings. This was premised on the assertion [83 S.Ct. 557] that, by remaining outside the United States to avoid military service after September 27, 1944, when § 401(j) took effect, he had lost his American citizenship. Following hearing, the Attorney General's special inquiry officer sustained the warrant and ordered that Mendoza-Martinez be deported as an alien. He appealed to the Board of Immigration Appeals of the Department of Justice, which dismissed his appeal.
Thereafter, Mendoza-Martinez brought a declaratory judgment action in the Federal District Court for the Southern District of California, seeking a declaration of his status as a citizen, of the unconstitutionality of § 401(j), and of the voidness of all orders of deportation directed against him. A single-judge District Court, in an unreported decision, entered judgment against Mendoza-Martinez in 1955, holding that, by virtue of § 401(j), which the court held to be constitutional, he had lost his nationality by remaining outside the jurisdiction of the United States after September 27, 1944. The Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit affirmed the judgment, 238 F.2d 239. This Court, in 1958, Mendoza-Martinez v. Mackey, 356 U.S. 258, granted certiorari, vacated the judgment, and remanded the cause to the District Court for reconsideration in light of its decision a week earlier in Trop v. Dulles, 356 U.S. 86.
the pleadings to put in issue the question of whether the facts as determined on the draft evasion conviction in 1947 collaterally estopped the Attorney General from now claiming that Mendoza-Martinez had lost his American citizenship while in Mexico. Mackey v. Mendoza-Martinez, 362 U.S. 384.
essentially penal in character, and deprives the plaintiff of procedural due process. . . . [T]he requirements of procedural due process are not satisfied by the administrative hearing of the Immigration Service nor in this present proceedings.3
Cort, the appellee in No. 3, is also a native-born American, born in Boston in 1927. Unlike Mendoza-Martinez, he has no dual nationality. His wife and two young children are likewise American citizens by birth. Following receipt of his M.D. degree from the Yale University School of Medicine in 1951, he went to England for the purpose of undertaking a position as a Research Fellow at Cambridge University. He had earlier registered in timely and proper fashion [83 S.Ct. 558] for the draft, and, shortly before
his departure, supplemented his regular Selective Service registration by registering under the newly enacted Doctors Draft Act.4 In late 1951, he received a series of letters from the American Embassy in London instructing him to deliver his...
41 S.W. 973 (Mo. 1897), The State v. Marcks