Opinion ID: 538815
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Rights of National Citizenship.

Text: 43 In Crandall v. Nevada, 73 U.S. (6 Wall.) 35, 18 L.Ed. 744 (1867), the Court struck down an egress tax Nevada had imposed on all persons leaving the state by railroad. In so doing, it held that the right to travel was an essential attribute of national citizenship. The Court reasoned as follows: 44 The People of these United States constitute one nation. They have a government in which all of them are deeply interested. This government has necessarily a capital established by law, where its principal operations are conducted.... That government has a right to call to this point any or all of its citizens to aid in its service, as members of the Congress, of the courts, of the executive departments, and to fill all its other offices; and this right cannot be made to depend upon the pleasure of a State over whose territory they must pass to reach the point where these services must be rendered. The government, also, has its offices of secondary importance in all other parts of the country.... In all these it demands the services of its citizens, and is entitled to bring them to those points from all quarters of the nation, and no power can exist in a State to obstruct this right that would not enable it to defeat the purposes for which the government was established. 45 .... 46 But if the government has these rights on her own account, the citizen also has correlative rights. He has the right to come to the seat of government to assert any claim he may have upon that government, or to transact any business he may have with it. To seek its protection, to share its offices, to engage in administering functions.... [T]his right is in its nature independent of the will of any State over whose soil he must pass in the exercise of it. 47 Id. at 43-44. Crandall, therefore, recognized a right to travel insofar as travel is necessary for the transaction of business between the national government and its citizenry. 48 Although Justice Douglas 24 and some commentators 25 have argued for extending Crandall into a generalized right of free movement throughout the United States, the Court has declined to do so. See, e.g., United States v. Wheeler, 254 U.S. 281, 299, 41 S.Ct. 133, 136, 65 L.Ed. 270 (1920) (distinguishing Crandall in part on the ground that the state statute considered in that case was held to directly burden the performance by the United States of its governmental functions and also to limit rights of the citizens growing out of such functions). 49 Plainly, the right to travel as recognized in Crandall is not implicated by the cruising ordinance. Lutz can proceed unimpeded by law (once he makes his way through the traffic jams on Philadelphia and Market Streets) to any federal installation at which he is called upon to exercise the various rights and duties of citizenship. 26 50