Court Opinion

ID: 9421569
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 22:58:57.392402+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:22:31.227027
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice Black,
with whom
Mr. Justice Douglas joins.
While I concur in the opinion of the Court I add the following to state what I conceive to be the controlling constitutional principles in this and other expatriation cases.
The Fourteenth Amendment declares that “All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.” Nishikawa was born in this country while subject to its jurisdiction; therefore American citizenship is his constitutional birthright. See United States v. Wong Kim Ark, 169 U. S. 649. What the Constitution has conferred neither the Congress, nor the Executive, nor the Judiciary, nor all three in concert, may strip away. Although Congress can enact laws punishing those who shirk their duties as citizens or those who jeopardize our relations with foreign countries it cannot involuntarily expatriate any citizen. As The Chief Justice and Mr. Justice Douglas explain in their dissenting opinions in Perez v. Brownell, ante, pp. 62, 79, this results not only from the provisions of the Fourteenth Amendment but from the manner in which the Government of the United States was formed, the fundamental political principles which underlie its existence, and its continuing relationship to the citizenry who *139erected and maintain it. Cf. Osborn v. Bank of the United States, 9 Wheat. 738, 827. In my view the notion that citizenship can be snatched away whenever such deprivation bears some “rational nexus” to the implementation of a power granted Congress by the Constitution is a dangerous and frightening proposition. By this standard a citizen could be transformed into a stateless outcast for evading his taxes, for fraud upon the Government, for counterfeiting its currency, for violating its voting laws and on and on ad infinitum.
Of course a citizen has the right to abandon or renounce his citizenship and Congress can enact measures to regulate and affirm such abjuration. But whether citizenship has been voluntarily relinquished is a question to be determined on the facts of each case after a judicial trial in full conformity with the Bill of Rights. Although Congress may provide rules of evidence for such trials, it cannot declare that such equivocal acts as service in a foreign army, participation in a foreign election or desertion from our armed forces, establish a conclusive presumption of intention to throw off American nationality. Cf. Tot v. United States, 319 U. S. 463. Of course such conduct may be highly persuasive evidence in the particular case of a purpose to abandon citizenship.
To the extent that Mackenzie v. Hare, 239 U. S. 299, and Savorgnan v. United States, 338 U. S. 491, applied principles contrary to those expressed in this opinion I believe they are inconsistent with the Constitution and cannot be regarded as binding authority.