Opinion ID: 107045
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: The Statute's Inapplicability to the Problem of Area Restrictions.

Text: 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.