Source: https://www.legalcrystal.com/case/99474/nishikawa-vs-dulles
Timestamp: 2019-12-13 00:41:39
Document Index: 435472806

Matched Legal Cases: ['§ 401', '§ 401', '§ 402', '§401', '§ 401', '§ 2', '§ 402', '§ 349', '§1481', '§ 401']

Nishikawa Vs Dulles - Citation 99474 - Court Judgment | LegalCrystal
Nishikawa Vs. Dulles - Court Judgment
LegalCrystal Citation legalcrystal.com/99474
Case Number 356 U.S. 129
Appellant Nishikawa
nishikawa v. dulles - 356 u.s. 129 (1958) u.s. supreme court nishikawa v. dulles, 356 u.s. 129 (1958) nishikawa v. dulles no. 19 argued may 1-2, 1957 restored to the calendar for reargument june 24, 1957 reargued october 28, 1957 decided march 31, 1958 356 u.s. 129 certiorari to the united states court of appeals for the ninth circuit syllabus petitioner was a native-born citizen of the united states and he was considered by japan to be a citizen of that country because his parents were japanese citizens. in 1939, he went to japan, intending to stay between two and five years visiting and studying. in 1941, he was conscripted into the japanese army, and he served in that army while japan was at war with.....
U.S. Supreme Court Nishikawa v. Dulles, 356 U.S. 129 (1958)
Held: the evidence was not sufficient to establish petitioner's loss of citizenship under § 401(c) of the Nationality Act of 1940 as a result of his entering and serving in the armed forces of a foreign state. Pp. 356 U. S. 130 -138.
(a) No conduct results in expatriation unless the conduct is engaged in voluntarily. P. 356 U. S. 133 .
(b) When a citizenship claimant proves his birth in this country or acquisition of American citizenship in some other way, the burden is upon the Government to prove an act that shows expatriation by clear, convincing, and unequivocal evidence, and this rule governs cases under all subsections of § 401. P. 356 U. S. 133 .
(c) Because the consequences of denationalization are so drastic, the burden is upon the Government of persuading the trier of fact by clear, convincing and unequivocal evidence that the act showing renunciation of citizenship was performed voluntarily whenever the question of voluntariness is put in issue. Pp. 356 U. S. 133 -137.
(d) On the record in this case, the Government has not sustained the burden of establishing the voluntary conduct that is an essential ingredient of expatriation. Pp. 356 U. S. 137 -138.
"(c) Entering, or serving in, the armed forces of a foreign state unless expressly authorized by the laws of the United States, if he has or acquires the nationality of such foreign state. . . . [ Footnote 1 ]"
We need not in this case consider the constitutionality of Section 401(c). This case thus differs from Perez v. Brownell, ante, p. 356 U. S. 44 , and Trop v. Dulles, ante, p. 356 U. S. 86 ,
Formally, the court found as a fact on the basis of petitioner's testimony alone, which did not include an admission to that effect, that his "entry and service in the Japanese Armed Forces was his free and voluntary act." Therefore he was held to have lost his nationality under Section 401(c) and judgment was rendered for respondent. The Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit affirmed that judgment. [ Footnote 2 ] We granted certiorari. 352 U.S. 907.
Whatever divergence of view there may be as to what conduct may, consistent with the Constitution, be said to result in loss of nationality, cf. Perez v. Brownell, ante, p. 356 U. S. 44 , it is settled that no conduct results in expatriation unless the conduct is engaged in voluntarily. Mandoli v. Acheson, 344 U. S. 133 . [ Footnote 3 ] The Government does not contend otherwise. Likewise, the parties are agreed that, when a citizenship claimant proves his birth in this country or acquisition of American citizenship in some other way, the burden is upon the Government to prove an act that shows expatriation by clear, convincing, and unequivocal evidence. In Gonzales v. Landon, 350 U.S. 920, we held that the rule as to burden of proof in denaturalization cases [ Footnote 4 ] applied to expatriation cases under Section 401(j) of the Nationality Act of 1940. We now conclude that the same rule should govern cases under all the subsections of Section 401.
burden of proving that his act was involuntary. [ Footnote 5 ] Petitioner contends that voluntariness is an element of the expatriating act, and, as such, must be proved by the Government. The Government, on the other hand, relies upon the ordinary rule that duress is a matter of affirmative defense, and contends that the party claiming that he acted involuntarily must overcome a presumption of voluntariness.
320 U. S. 118 , 320 U. S. 122 . [ Footnote 6 ] The same principle applies to expatriation cases, and it calls for placing upon the Government the burden of persuading the trier of fact by clear, convincing and unequivocal evidence that the act showing renunciation of citizenship was voluntarily performed. While one finds in the legislative history of Section 401, and particularly Section 401(c), recognition of the concept of voluntariness, [ Footnote 7 ] there is no discussion of the problem of the burden of proof. What is clear is that the House Committee which considered the bill rejected a proposal to enact a conclusive presumption of voluntariness in the case of dual nationals entering or serving in the military forces of the nation of their second nationality. [ Footnote 8 ] It is altogether consonant with this history to
place upon the Government the burden of proving voluntariness. The Court has said that "Rights of citizenship are not to be destroyed by an ambiguity." Perkins v. Elg, 307 U. S. 325 , 307 U. S. 337 . The reference was to an ambiguity in a treaty, but the principle there stated demands also that evidentiary ambiguities are not to be resolved against the citizen.
Finally, the Government contends that, even if it has the burden of proving voluntariness by clear, convincing and unequivocal evidence, that burden has been met in this case. What view the District Court took of the burden of proof does not clearly appear. The Court of Appeals seemed at one point to accept the evidence in the District Court as sufficient even on the view of the burden of proof as above stated. [ Footnote 9 ] That conclusion is not supportable. Of course, the citizenship claimant is subject to the rule dictated by common experience that one ordinarily acts voluntarily. Unless voluntariness is put in issue, the Government makes its case simply by proving the objective expatriating act. But here, petitioner showed that he was conscripted in a totalitarian country to whose conscription law, with its penal sanctions, he was subject. This adequately injected the issue of voluntariness and required the Government to sustain its burden
of proving voluntary conduct by clear, convincing and unequivocal evidence. [ Footnote 10 ] The Government has not sustained that burden on this record. The fact that petitioner made no protest and did not seek aid of American officials -- efforts that, for all that appears, would have been in vain -- does not satisfy the requisite standard of proof. Nor can the district judge's disbelief of petitioner's story of his motives and fears fill the evidentiary gap in the Government's case. The Government's only affirmative evidence was that petitioner went to Japan at a time when he was subject to conscription.
Baumgartner v. United States, 322 U. S. 665 ; Schneiderman v. United States, 320 U. S. 118 .
See also United States v. Minker, 350 U. S. 179 , 350 U. S. 197 (concurring opinion): "When we deal with citizenship, we tread on sensitive ground."
Petitioner's evidence of conscription also dispelled the presumption created by § 402 of the Nationality Act of 1940, 54 Stat. 1169, that a national who remains six months or more within the country of which either he or his parents have been nationals, has expatriated himself under §401(c) or (d). Even if valid, "Section 402 does not enlarge § 401(c) or (d)," Kawakita v. United States, 343 U. S. 717 , 343 U. S. 730 , and, like the analogous provision of § 2 of the Act of March 2, 1907, 34 Stat. 1228, it creates "a presumption easy to preclude, and easy to overcome." United States v. Gay, 264 U. S. 353 , 264 U. S. 358 . The ambiguous terms of § 402 have since been superseded by § 349(b) of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952, 66 Stat. 268, 8 U.S.C. §1481(b), which establishes a conclusive presumption of voluntariness on the part of a dual national who performs an expatriating act if he had resided in the state of his second nationality an aggregate of ten years or more immediately prior thereto. Of course, the new statutory presumption is not in issue in this case and there is no need to consider its validity.
Nishikawa was born in this country while subject to its jurisdiction; therefore, American citizenship is his constitutional birthright. See United States v. Wong Kim Ark, 169 U. S. 649 . What the Constitution has conferred, neither the Congress, nor the Executive, nor the Judiciary, nor all three in concert, may strip away. Although Congress can enact laws punishing those who shirk their duties as citizens or those who jeopardize our relations with foreign countries, it cannot involuntarily expatriate any citizen. As the CHIEF JUSTICE and MR. JUSTICE DOUGLAS explain in their dissenting opinions in Perez v. Brownell, ante, p. 356 U. S. 62 , 356 U. S. 79 , this results not only from the provisions of the Fourteenth Amendment, but from the manner in which the Government of the United States was formed, the fundamental political principles which underlie its existence, and its continuing relationship to the citizenry who
erected and maintain it. Cf. 22 U. S. Bank of the United States, 9 Wheat. 738, 22 U. S. 827 . In my view, the notion that citizenship can be snatched away whenever such deprivation bears some "rational nexus" to the implementation of a power granted Congress by the Constitution is a dangerous and frightening proposition. By this standard, a citizen could be transformed into a stateless outcast for evading his taxes, for fraud upon the Government, for counterfeiting its currency, for violating its voting laws and on and on ad infinitum.
Of course, a citizen has the right to abandon or renounce his citizenship, and Congress can enact measures to regulate and affirm such abjuration. But whether citizenship has been voluntarily relinquished is a question to be determined on the facts of each case after a judicial trial in full conformity with the Bill of Rights. Although Congress may provide rules of evidence for such trials, it cannot declare that such equivocal acts as service in a foreign army, participation in a foreign election, or desertion from our armed forces, establish a conclusive presumption of intention to throw off American nationality. Cf. Tot v. United States, 319 U. S. 463 . Of course, such conduct may be highly persuasive evidence in the particular case of a purpose to abandon citizenship.
To the extent that Mackenzie v. Hare, 239 U. S. 299 , and Savorgnan v. United States, 338 U. S. 491 , applied principles contrary to those expressed in this opinion, I believe they are inconsistent with the Constitution, and cannot be regarded as binding authority.
Petitioner asserts that his service in the Japanese forces was performed under duress. His claim of duress is based on the fact that he was inducted into the Japanese armed forces pursuant to the compulsory conscription law of that country, [ Footnote 2/1 ] and that rumors of harsh punishment of draft evaders by the secret police and the ruthlessness of the government in power made him afraid to take any action to avoid service. The evidence to rebut this testimony, elicited on cross-examination, was that he had failed to take certain actions to avoid service; the only affirmative act urged in support of the voluntariness of his entry into service is that he went to Japan when he was of draft-eligible age [ Footnote 2/2 ] and remained there until inducted.
It is common ground that conduct will result in expatriation only if voluntarily performed. See Mackenzie v. Hare, 239 U. S. 299 , 239 U. S. 311 -312; cf. Acheson v. Kiyokuro Okimura, 342 U.S. 899; Acheson v. Hisao Murata, 342 U.S. 900. Accordingly, where a person who has been declared expatriated contests that declaration on grounds of duress, the evidence in support of this claim must be sympathetically scrutinized. This is so both because of the extreme gravity of being denationalized and because of the subtle psychologic factors that bear on duress.
The issue that is ultimately decisive in a litigation is one thing, the mode for determining it quite another. The fact that conduct, in order to result in loss of citizenship, must be voluntary behavior does not inherently define the appropriate manner of its proof. The Government properly has a very heavy burden in expatriation cases: it must establish that the citizen committed an "act of expatriation" -- i.e., engaged in conduct of which the consequence is loss of citizenship -- by clear, convincing and unequivocal evidence. Gonzales v. Landon, 350 U.S. 920, adopting the standard of Schneiderman v. United States, 320 U. S. 118 , and Baumgartner v. United States, 322 U. S. 665 . This is incumbent on the Government although the evidence in cases such as these may well be difficult to obtain. Much more difficult would it be for the Government to establish the citizen's state of mind as it bears on his will, purpose and choice of action -- in short, "voluntariness." According to the ordinarily controlling principles of evidence, this would suggest that the individual, who is peculiarly equipped to clarify an ambiguity in the meaning of outward events, should have the burden of proving what is state of mind was. See Selma, Rome & Dalton R. Co. v. United States, 139 U. S. 560 , 139 U. S. 567 -568. Moreover, any other evidence of his state of mind, outside of his own mental disclosures, will often be found only abroad, where the Government may have no facilities for conducting the necessary investigation. The Court should hesitate long before imposing on the Government, by a generalized, uncritical formula, a burden so heavy that the will of Congress becomes incapable of sensible, rational, fair enforcement.
Where an individual engages in conduct by command of a penal statute of another country to whose laws he is subject, the gravest doubt is cast on the applicability of the normal assumption -- even in a prosecution for murder ( see Leland v. Oregon, 343 U. S. 790 ) -- that what
The Courts of Appeals have divided on the question whether proof of conscription, in the absence of anything more on either side, precludes a finding that service in a foreign army was voluntary. The Second and Third Circuits have held that it does. Augello v. Dulles, 220 F.2d 344; Lehmann v. Acheson, 206 F.2d 592; Perri v. Dulles, 206 F.2d 586. The District of Columbia Circuit has ruled that "[d]uress cannot be inferred from the mere fact of conscription." Acheson v. Maenza, 92 U.S.App.D.C. 85, 90, 202 F.2d 453, 458; Alata v. Dulles, 95 U.S.App.D.C. 182, 221, F.2d 52; but see Bruni v. Dulles, 98 U.S.App.D.C. 358, 235 F.2d 855. [ Footnote 3/1 ]
such cases from the duty of proving that their presumably voluntary acts were actually involuntary. [ Footnote 3/2 ]
Japan, or to employ the aid of friends or relatives in the United States. [ Footnote 3/3 ] Nishikawa admits that he did none of these things. But if he claimed that he had, is it not apparent that he, and not the Government, is the logical party to bring forward the pertinent evidence? In such circumstances, it seems to me the better course to require Nishikawa to prove his allegation of duress, rather than to impose on the Government the well nigh impossible task of producing evidence to refute such a claim.
Nishikawa's constitutional contention that Congress lacked power to enact § 401(c) is, in my view, foreclosed by Perez v. Brownell, ante, p. 356 U. S. 44 .
See also Hamamoto v. Acheson, 98 F.Supp. 904. Compare Acheson v. Hiyokuro Okimura, 342 U.S. 899; Acheson v. Hisao Murata, 342 U.S. 900, and the dissenting opinion in Mandoli v. Acheson, 344 U. S. 133 , 344 U. S. 139 . As we read Gonzales v. Landon, 350 U.S. 920, cited in the majority opinion, that case related simply to the standard, and not to the burden, of proof in denationalization cases.
Nishikawa was in Japan for 10 months before he even received notice to report for physical examination in the draft. He was inducted over 18 months after his arrival in Japan. This Court held in Kawakita v. United States, 343 U. S. 717 , 343 U. S. 730 :