Opinion ID: 764897
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The Purposes of Alienage Jurisdiction

Text: 20 Most courts have accepted the proposition that the problem of statelessness was unanticipated by the Framers, because it is a twentieth-century phenomenon. [A] basic assumption of the drafters was that anyone who was not a citizen of the United States must by definition have been subject to the power of a foreign government or sovereign. Matimak, 118 F.3d at 87. Thus, the Framers apparently considered the class of subjects or citizens of a foreign state as identical with the class ofaliens. See Kevin R. Johnson, Why Alienage Jurisdiction? Historical Foundations and Modern Justifications for Federal Jurisdiction over Disputes Involving Noncitizens, 21 Yale J. Int'l L. 1, 1-20 (1996). 21 Historical evidence from the Federalist Papers and the debates over the ratification of the Constitution shows that the Framers often refer[red] to citizens, subjects and foreigners interchangeably. Van der Schelling v. U.S. News & World Report, Inc., 213 F. Supp. 756, 759 (E.D. Pa.), aff'd, 324 F.2d 956 (3d Cir. 1963) (per curiam). In fact, the phrase citizens or subjects reflected an expansive intent: 22 The framers of the Constitution were undoubtedly keenly aware of the fact that they had lately been subjects and that in other lands men still remained subjects of a sovereign and not citizens of a state.. . . It was only by the inclusion of `subjects' that all aliens, whether they [owed] allegiance to a sovereign monarch or were citizens of a democracy, could sue or be sued in federal courts. 23  . . . . Indeed, Story's doubts appear to have been abandoned, for in his `Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States' (5th Ed., 1891) he says, at page 499: 24  `   The inquiry may here be made, who are to be deemed aliens entitled to sue in the courts of the United States? The general answer is, any person who is not a citizen of the United States.   ' 25 Id. at 761 (emphasis added). Thus, while foreign modes of government are hardly technicalities in any other sense, the Framers apparently did not consider them relevant to the exercise of federal jurisdiction. See Johnson, supra; Bradford Williams, Note, The Aftermath of Matimak Trading Co. v. Khalily: Is the American Legal System Ready for Global Interdependence?, 23 N.C. J. Int'l L. & Com. Reg. 201, 224-25 (1997); cf. Wilson v. Humphreys (Cayman) Ltd., 916 F.2d 1239, 1242 (7th Cir. 1990) (holding that the policies supporting alienage jurisdiction supported jurisdiction over a Cayman Islands citizen--the Cayman Islands is also a British Dependent Territory). 26 Matimak rejected these and similar statements on the ground that the Framers never contemplated statelessness. See Matimak, 118 F.3d at 87. However, without further analysis, this is an inadequate response. The Framers never contemplated telephones, and yet we have applied the Fourth Amendment to cases about telephones. See Katz v. United States, 389 U.S. 347 (1967) (overruling an earlier decision that had held that telephones, not having been within the Framers' contemplation, would not receive Fourth Amendment protection). The relevant question is whether the Framers articulated principles that assist us in this case. 27 We believe that they did. The history reviewed in Van der Schelling is relevant because Hong Kong's importance to the United States evokes the Framers' concerns for smooth foreign relations. As two practitioners note, British Dependent Territories are the international equivalent of Delaware or Nevada for many clients. William Wilson III & Jonathan K. Cooperman, 2d Circuit Bars Suits by Offshore Corporations, Nat'l L.J., Aug. 25, 1997, at B9. Because Hong Kong was a dependent territory of the United Kingdom and is now a special administrative region of the Peoples' Republic of China, the way we treat its corporations may affect our relations with those countries, not to mention our relations with Hong Kong itself. See Wilson, 916 F.2d at 1243 (exercise of American judicial authority over a citizen of a British Dependent Territory implicates our relations with the United Kingdom). The State Department expressed this concern in its submission to us. 28