Court Opinion

ID: 9427736
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:21:44.656402+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:23:09.361021
License: Public Domain

Me. Justice Stevens,
concurring in part and dissenting in part.
The Court today unanimously reiterates the principle set forth in Afroyim v. Rusk, 387 U. S. 253, that Congress may not deprive an American of his citizenship against his will, but may only effectuate the citizen’s own intention to renounce his citizenship. I agree with the Court that Congress may establish certain standards for determining whether such a renunciation has occurred. It may; for example, provide that expatriation can be proved by evidence that a person has performed an act that is normally inconsistent with continued citizenship and that the person thereby specifically intended to relinquish his American citizenship.
I do not agree, however, with the conclusion that Congress has established a permissible standard in 8 U. S. C. § 1481 (a)(2). Since we accept dual citizenship, taking an oath of allegiance to a foreign government is not necessarily inconsistent with an intent to remain an American citizen. Moreover, as now written, the statute cannot fairly be read to require a finding of specific intent to relinquish citizenship. The statute unambiguously states that
“a national of the United States . . . shall lose his nationality by—
"(2) taking an oath or making an affirmation or other formal declaration of allegiance to a foreign state or a political subdivision thereof.”
There is no room in this provision to imply a requirement of a specific intent to relinquish citizenship. The Court does *273not attempt to do so, nor does it explain how any other part of the statute supports its conclusion that Congress required proof of specific intent.1
I also disagree with the holding that a person may be deprived of his citizenship upon a showing by a mere preponderance of the evidence that he intended to relinquish it. The Court reasons that because the proceedings in question are civil in nature and do not result in any loss of physical liberty, no greater burden of proof is required than in the ordinary civil case. Such reasoning construes the constitutional concept of “liberty” too narrowly.
The House Report accompanying the 1961 amendment to the Immigration and Naturalization Act of 1952 refers to “the dignity and the priceless value of U. S. citizenship.” H. R. *274Rep. No. 1086, 87th Cong., 1st Sess., 41 (1961). That characterization is consistent with this Court’s repeated appraisal of the quality of the interest at stake in this proceeding.2 In my judgment a person’s interest in retaining his American citizenship is surely an aspect of “liberty” of which he cannot be deprived without due process of law. Because the interest at stake is comparable to that involved in Addington v. Texas, 441 U. S. 418, essentially for the reasons stated in The Chief Justice’s opinion for a unanimous Court in that case, see id., at 425-427, 431-433, I believe that due process requires that a clear and convincing standard of proof be met in this case as well before the deprivation may occur.

 It could perhaps be argued that a specific intent requirement can be derived from 8 U. S. C. § 1481 (c). That subsection creates a rebuttable presumption that any expatriating act set forth in subsection (a) was performed “voluntarily.” The term “voluntary” could conceivably be stretched to include the concept of a specific intent to renounce one’s citizenship. While the person seeking to retain his citizenship would thus have the burden of showing a lack of specific intent, such a construction would at least provide a statutory basis for bringing the issue of intent into the proceeding. The majority apparently would not be willing to accept such a construction in order to salvage the statute, however, inasmuch as it rejects the appellant Secretary’s argument that, if there is a requirement of specific intent, it is also subject to the presumption applicable to voluntariness. Ante, at 268.
The majority’s assumption that the statute can be read to require specific intent to relinquish citizenship as an element of proof is also contradicted by the Court’s treatment in Afroyim of a different subsection of the same statute. Like the subsection at issue here, subsection (a) (5) provided that an American automatically lost his nationality by performing a specific act: in that case, voting in a foreign election. If the majority’s analysis in this ease were correct, the Court in Afroyim should not have invalidated that provision of the statute; rather, it should merely have remanded for a finding as to whether Afroyim had voted in a foreign election with specific intent to relinquish his American citizenship. That the Court did not do so is strong evidence of its belief that the statute could not be reformed as it is today.

 See Kennedy v. Mendoza-Martinez, 372 U. S. 144, 160, where the Court quoted another report describing American citizenship as “ 'one of the most valuable rights in the world today.’ ” See also Afroyim v. Rusk, 387 U. S. 253, 267-268; Troy v. Dulles, 356 U. S. 86, 92.