Court Opinion

ID: 9451793
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 17:23:40.589026+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:32:53.149625
License: Public Domain

KAUFMAN, Circuit Judge
(concurring) :
I feel constrained to concur — albeit reluctantly. In Tanaka v. Immigration & Naturalization Service, 346 F.2d 438 (2d Cir. 1965) (dissenting opinion), I expressed grave doubt as to whether the Supreme Court’s opinion in Perez v. Brownell, 356 U.S. 44, 78 S.Ct. 568 (1958) retained vitality. And, I questioned there whether Perez was not to be limited to its facts in the face of the Court’s subsequent holdings in Kennedy v. Mendoza-Martinez, 372 U.S. 144, 83 S.Ct. 554 (1963) and Schneider v. Rusk, 377 U.S. 163, 84 S.Ct. 1187 (1964). I am still of the view that the Supreme Court’s opinion in Perez, a bare majority of one ruling, should be narrowly construed and strictly confined to its facts until that Court is asked to review its interpretation of Section 401(e) of the Nationality Act of 1940,* an event which I believe is inevitable in light of the series of perplexing denationalization opinions rendered by the Supreme Court in its 1963 term. See Kurland, The Supreme Court 1963 Term — Forward: Equal in Origin and Equal in Title to the Legislative and Executive Branches of the Government, 78 Harv.L.Rev. 143, 169-175 (1964). And, it is not of little interest that Justice Brennan, a member of the five-to-four Perez majority subsequently expressed his own “doubts of the correctness of Perez, which I joined.” Kennedy v. Mendoza-Martinez, supra, 372 U.S. at 187, 83 S.Ct. at 577.
Furthermore, the ratio decidendi of Perez is not persuasive when applied to the instant facts. I see no reason why an individual who performed the act of voting in a foreign election, after full disclosure of his American ties should be visited with such severe consequences as loss of citizenship and the deportation which will inevitably follow, without a showing that his voting somehow impeded or interfered with the conduct of this country’s foreign affairs. Such interference was the “rational nexus” which Mr. Justice Frankfurter found so essential in Perez and which is wholly missing here.
I lean to the view that if Afroyim had not expressly stipulated the facts of his case so as to bring it squarely within the ambit of Perez, the result here might have been different. To illustrate, the administrative record, discloses that unlike Perez who did not reveal his American citizenship to the Mexican authorities when he voted there, Afroyim presented his identification booklet — a docu*106ment which described him as an American citizen — to the Israeli election officials. Thus, Israeli authorities, knowing of Afroyim’s American citizenship, would seem to have openly ignored any objection that country might have had to a non-Israeli voting in its elections. It is fair to infer from this that any risk of embarrassment to this country’s relationship with Israel by reason of the involvement of Afroyim in Israel’s internal affairs was thus removed.
However, in light of the stipulation in this case and because the majority of two panels of this Court believes that Perez has not become moribund, I concur reluctantly, as I have already indicated, in the result reached in the majority opinion.

 This provision has been carried forward as Section 349(a) (5) of the Immigration and Naturalization Act of 1952.