Opinion ID: 107045
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: statutory authority

Text: I cannot accept the Court's view that authority to impose area restrictions was granted to the Executive by Congress in the Passport Act of 1926, 44 Stat. 887, 22 U. S. C. § 211a (1958 ed.), which provides, The Secretary of State may grant and issue passports . . . under such rules as the President shall designate and prescribe for and on behalf of the United States, and no other person shall grant, issue, or verify such passports. I do not believe that the legislative history of this provision, or administrative practice prior to its most recent re-enactment in 1926 will support the Court's interpretation of the statute. Moreover, the nature of the problem presented by area restrictions makes it unlikely that authority to impose such restrictions was granted by Congress in the course of enacting such a broad general statute. In my view, as the history I shall relate establishes, this statute was designed solely to centralize authority to issue passports in the hands of the Secretary of State in order to overcome the abuses and chaos caused by the fact that prior to the passage of the statute numerous unauthorized persons issued passports and travel documents.
The 1926 provision has its origin in the Act of August 18, 1856, 11 Stat. 52, 60-61. Prior to 1856 the issuance of passports was not regulated by law. Governors of States, local mayors, and even notaries public issued documents which served as passports. This produced confusion abroad. In 1835 Secretary of State Forsyth wrote: It is within the knowledge of the Department that the diplomatic agents of foreign governments in the United States have declined authenticating acts of governors or other State or local authorities; and foreign officers abroad usually require that passports granted by such authorities shall be authenticated by the ministers or consuls of the United States. Those functionaries, being thus called upon, find themselves embarrassed between their desire to accommodate their fellow-citizens and their unwillingness to certify what they do not officially know; and the necessity of some uniform practice, which may remove the difficulties on all sides, has been strongly urged upon the Department. III Moore, International Law Digest 862-863 (1906). Despite administrative efforts to curb the flow of state and local passports, Secretary of State Marcy wrote in 1854: To preserve proper respect for our passports it will be necessary to guard against frauds as far as possible in procuring them. I regret to say that local magistrates or persons pretending to have authority to issue passports have imposed upon persons who go abroad with these spurious papers. Others, again, who know that they are not entitled to passports not being citizens of the United Statesseek to get these fraudulent passports, thinking that they will protect them while abroad. III Moore, op. cit. supra, at 863. As is noted in an official history of the State Department. The lack of legal provision on the subject [of passports] led to gross abuses, and `the impositions practiced upon the illiterate and unwary by the fabrication of worthless passports' [IX Op. Atty. Gen. 350] led finally to the passage of the Act of August 18, 1856. The Department of State of the United States: Its History and Functions 178 (1893). This Act provided that the Secretary of State shall be authorized to grant and issue passports. and cause passports to be granted, issued, and verified in foreign countries by such diplomatic or consular officers of the United States, and under such rules as the President shall designate and prescribe for and on behalf of the United States, and no other person shall grant, issue, or verify any such passport. 11 Stat. 60. That Act made it a crime for a person to issue a passport who was not authorized to do so. This provision was re-enacted on July 3, 1926. 44 Stat. 887, in substantially identical form. [5] There is no indication in the legislative history either at the time the Act was originally passed in 1856 or when it was re-enacted, that it was meant to serve any purpose other than that of centralizing the authority to issue passports in the hands of the Secretary of State so as to eliminate abuses in their issuance. Thus, in my view, the authority to make rules, granted by the statute to the Executive, extends only to the promulgation of rules designed to carry out this statutory purpose.
The administrative practice of the State Department prior to 1926 does not support the Court's view that when Congress re-enacted the 1856 provision in 1926 it intended to grant the Executive authority to impose area restrictions. Prior to the First World War the State Department had never limited the validity of passports for travel to any particular area. In fact, limitations upon travel had been imposed only twice. During the War of 1812 Congress specifically provided by statute that persons could not cross enemy lines without a passport. and in 1861 at the beginning of the Civil War the Secretary of State ruled that passports would not be issued to persons whose loyalty was in doubt. These restrictions were imposed in time of war. The first, restricting the area of travel, evidently was thought to require a specific statutory enactment by Congress, and the second did not limit the area of travel, but, rather, limited the persons to whom passports would be issued. [6] Until 50 years ago peacetime limitations upon the right of a citizen to travel were virtually unknown, see Chafee, op. cit. supra, at 193; Jaffe, The Right to Travel: The Passport Problem. 35 Foreign Affairs 17, and it was in this atmosphere that the Act of 1856 was passed and its re-enactment prior to 1926 took place. The only area restrictions imposed between 1856 and 1926 arose out of the First World War. Although Americans were not required by law to carry passports in 1915, certain foreign countries insisted that Americans have them. American Consulates and Embassies abroad were therefore authorized to issue emergency passports after the outbreak of the war, and in 1915 the Secretary of State telegraphed American Ambassadors and Ministers in France, Germany, Great Britain, Italy, the Netherlands, and Denmark: Do not issue emergency passports for use in Belgium [then occupied by German armed forces] unless applicants obliged to go thither by special exigency or authorized by Red Cross or Belgian Relief Commission. See III Hackworth, Digest of International Law 525-526 (1942). After the United States entered World War I travel to areas of belligerency and to enemy countries was restricted. Passports were marked not valid for travel to these areas, and Congress provided by statute that passports were necessary in order to leave or enter the United States. The congressional Act requiring passports for travel expired in 1921, and soon after the official end of the war passports were marked valid for travel to all countries. See III Hackworth, supra, at 527; Hearings before the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations on Department of State Passport Policies, 85th Cong., 1st Sess., 64 (hereafter Senate Hearings). Thus in 1926 freedom of travel was as complete as prior to World War I. In this atmosphere Congress re-enacted, in virtually identical terms, the 1856 statute, the sole purpose of which, as I have already noted, was to centralize passport issuance. Congress in doing so did not indicate the slightest intent or desire to enlarge the authority of the Executive to regulate the issuance of passports. Surely travel restrictions imposed while the United States was at war and a single telegram instructing ministers to deny emergency passports for a brief time in 1915 for travel to a theatre of war, do not show that Congress, by re-enacting the 1856 Act in 1926, intended to authorize the Executive to impose area restrictions upon travel in peacetime whenever the Executive believed such restrictions might advance American foreign policy. The long tradition of freedom of movement, the fact that no passport area restrictions existed prior to World War I, the complete absence of any indication in the legislative history that Congress intended to delegate such sweeping authority to the Executive all point in precisely the opposite direction. [7] In Kent v. Dulles, supra , the Court held that the 1926 Act did not authorize the Secretary of State to withhold passports from persons because of their political beliefs or associations. Although it was argued that prior to 1926 the Secretary had withheld passports from Communists and other suspected subversives and that such an administrative practice had been adopted by Congress, the Court found that the evidence of such a practice was insufficient to warrant the conclusion that it had congressional authorization. Yet in Kent v. Dulles the Government pointed to scattered Executive interpretations showing that upon occasion the State Department believed that it had the authority in peacetime to withhold passports from persons deemed by the Department to hold subversive beliefs. In 1901 Attorney General Knox advised the Secretary of State that a passport might be withheld from an avowed anarchist. 23 Op. Atty. Gen. 509, 511. Orders promulgated by the Passport Office periodically have required denial of passport to revolutionary radicals. See Passport Office Instructions of May 4, 1921. A State Department memorandum of May 29, 1956, in summarizing the Department's passport policy, states that after the Russian Revolution passports were refused to American Communists who desired to go abroad for indoctrination, instruction, etc. This policy was continued until 1931 . . . . [8] These isolated instances of the assumption of authority to refuse passports to persons thought subversive were held insufficient to show that Congress in 1926 intended to grant the Secretary of State discretionary authority to deny passports to persons because of their political beliefs, Kent v. Dulles, supra, at 128. This case presents an even more attenuated showing of administrative practice, for there is revealed only one isolated instance of a peacetime area restriction and this closely connected with World War I. Clearly this single instance is insufficient to show that Congress intended to authorize the Secretary to impose peacetime area restrictions. Moreover, just as the more numerous instances of restriction on travel because of political beliefs and associations in wartime were insufficient to show that Congress intended to grant the Secretary authority to curtail such travel in time of peace, see Kent v. Dulles, supra, at 128. so here the fact that area restrictions were imposed during World War I does not show that Congress intended to grant the Secretary authority to impose such restrictions in time of peace. In time of war and in the exercise of the war power, restrictions may be imposed that are neither permissible nor tolerable in time of peace. See Kent v. Dulles, supra, at 128; cf. Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer, 343 U. S. 579. But see Kennedy v. Mendoza-Martinez, 372 U. S. 144. Thus even if the State Department's wartime practice should lead to the conclusion that area restrictions in time of war were sanctioned, it surely does not show that Congress wished to authorize similar curtailment of the right to travel in time of peace. [9] While the Court intimates that Kent v. Dulles is distinguishable from the present case because in Kent v. Dulles passports were denied on the basis of the applicants' political beliefs, ante, at 13, I find little in the logic of that opinion to support such a distinction. The Court in Kent v. Dulles based its conclusions that the Executive does not have an inherent power to impose peacetime passport restrictions and that Congress did not delegate such authority to the Executive on the history of passport restrictions and the constitutional basis of the right to travel. While the Court there mentions that it is dealing with beliefs, with associations, with ideological matters, 357 U. S. at 130, a reading of the opinion clearly reveals that its holding does not turn upon such factors. Moreover, the importance of travel to the gathering of information, an activity closely connected with the First Amendment and a right asserted here, seems to be a major reason for the Court's holding in Aptheker and Kent that the right to travel is afforded constitutional protection. Kent v. Dulles thus seems not only relevant, but controlling, in the case presented here.
The Court's interpretation of the 1926 Passport Act not only overlooks the legislative history of the Act and departs from the letter and spirit of this Court's decisions in Kent v. Dulles, supra , and Aptheker v. Secretary of State, supra , but it also implies that Congress resolved. through a sweeping grant of authority, the many substantial problems involved in curtailing a citizen's right to travel because of considerations of national policy. People travel abroad for numerous reasons of varying importance. Some travel for pleasure, others for business, still others for education. Foreign correspondents and lecturers must equip themselves with firsthand information. Scientists and scholars gain considerably from interchanges with colleagues in other nations. See Chafee, op. cit. supra, at 195. Just as there are different reasons for people wanting to travel, so there are different reasons advanced by the Government for its need to impose area restrictions. These reasons vary. The Government says restrictions are imposed sometimes because of political differences with countries, sometimes because of unsettled conditions. and sometimes, as in this case, as part of a program, undertaken together with other nations, to isolate a hostile foreign country such as Cuba because of its attempts to promote the subversion of democratic nations. See Senate Hearings 63-69. The Department of State also has imposed different types of travel restrictions in different circumstances. All newsmen, for example, were prohibited from traveling to China, see Senate Hearings 67, but they have been allowed to visit Cuba. See Public Notice 179 (Jan. 16, 1961), 26 Fed. Reg. 492; Press Release No. 24, issued by the Secretary of State, Jan. 16, 1961. In view of the different types of need for travel restrictions, the various reasons for traveling abroad, the importance and constitutional underpinnings of the right to travel and the right of a citizen and a free press to gather information about foreign countries, it cannot be presumed that Congress, without focusing upon the complex problems involved, resolved them by adopting a broad and sweeping statute which, in the Court's view, confers unlimited discretion upon the Executive, and which makes no distinctions reconciling the rights of the citizen to travel with the Government's legitimate needs. I do not know how Congress would deal with this complex area were it to focus on the problems involved, or whether, for example, in light of our commitment to freedom of the press, Congress would consent under any circumstances to prohibiting newsmen from traveling to foreign countries. But, faced with a complete absence of legislative consideration of these complex issues, I would not presume that Congress, in 1926, issued a blanket authorization to the Executive to impose area restrictions and define their scope and duration, for the nature of the problem seems plainly to call for a more discriminately fashioned statute.