Court Opinion

ID: 9445400
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-03 21:28:11.34647+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:30:15.315791
License: Public Domain

CLARK, Chief Judge
(dissenting).
I am constrained to disagree with both the substance and the procedural form of the result here reached. Plaintiff-appellant has cited to us and obviously relied on the masterful analysis of expatriation legislation set forth in the Comment, The Expatriation Act of 1954, 64 Yale L.J. 1164, 1189-1199. I agree with the author’s documented conclusions therein that punitive expatriation of persons with no other nationality constitutes cruel and unusual punishment and is invalid as such. Since I doubt if I can add to the persuasive arguments there made, I shall merely incorporate by reference. In my faith, the American concept of man’s dignity does not comport with making even those we would punish completely “stateless” — fair game for the despoiler at home and the oppressor abroad, if indeed there is any place which will tolerate them at all.
On procedure I think we are bound as judges to face and decide this issue. It is unfair to the capable and experienced lawyer who presented this appeal to hold that he did not present this argument. For what other possible reason could he have made the specific and exact citation I have given above? His refreshingly brief statement, I conceive, needed no more. But I had supposed that we were bound in any event to do justice and administer the law as between the parties who have come before us.