Court Opinion

ID: 9422379
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:02:19.943278+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:22:36.320350
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice Brennan,
concurring.
While I agree with the reasoning of the Court and join its opinion, I wish to note my view that its interpretation of § 360 of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952 is further supported by serious doubt as to whether the statute as construed and applied by the dissenting opinion would be constitutional. Compare, e. g., United States v. Witkovich, 353 U. S. 194, 201-202.
Necessarily implicit in the administrative denial of a right or privilege of citizenship on the ground that the individual affected has committed an expatriating act enumerated in § 401 of the 1940 Act or § 349 of the 1952 Act, is the assumption that the individual was theretofore a citizen. Accordingly, it follows from the interpretation advanced by the dissent that a person abroad who just prior to the adverse administrative action admittedly had been deemed a citizen, entitled to all the incidents of citizenship including the freedom to re-enter the country, may by unreviewable administrative action be relegated to the status of an alien confronted by all the barriers to alien entry and the limited access to judicial review that an alien enjoys. That Congress may, consistently with the requirements of due process, circumscribe general grants of jurisdiction 1 so as to deny judicial review of administrative action which peremptorily initi*381ates the treatment as an alien of one who had been a citizen seems at least doubtful enough that we should, if reasonably possible, avoid interpreting any statute to accomplish such a result.
If §§ 360 (b), (c) provided the sole avenue to judicial review for one who while abroad is denied a right of citizenship, the following consequences would result: He would have to apply for a certificate of identity, which would be granted only if an administrative official was satisfied that the application was made in good faith and had a substantial basis. If the certificate were initially denied, an administrative appeal would have to be taken. If that failed, an attempt might be made to secure judicial review. A holding that no such review is available would mean that one who admittedly had been a citizen would have been conclusively converted into an alien without ever having gained access to any court. On the other hand, if review were forthcoming at this stage, and if issuance of a certificate were ordered, the individual would have gained only the right to travel to a United States port of entry — if he could afford the passage— there to be “subject to all the provisions of this chapter relating to the conduct of proceedings involving aliens seeking admission to the United States.” He would, in other words, have to submit to detention as an alien although it is assumed that he was once a citizen and no court had ever determined that he had been expatriated. Should he still encounter an administrative denial of the right to enter, he would finally get into court, but “in habeas corpus proceedings and not otherwise,” with whatever limitations upon the scope of review such language may imply.
The dissent would construe § 360 to mean that administrative action resulting in such a stark limitation of such fundamental rights is totally unreviewable. For the very procedures of subsections (b) and (c), which according to *382the dissent’s interpretation are the only avenues to review open to the putative expatriate abroad, accomplish a conversion of citizenship into alienage. To read Congress as having denied judicial review of administrative action which throws an individual into this bind would be to tread upon a constitutional quicksand.
The dissent finds shelter in United States v. Ju Toy, 198 U. S. 253, but that case does not resolve the constitutional doubts I have suggested. The precise issue there was the degree of finality to be accorded in habeas corpus proceedings to an administrative refusal of entry based on a finding that the petitioner was not, as he claimed, native-born and so had never been a citizen. Ju Toy was not an expatriation case in which administrative officials purported to withdraw rights of citizenship which admittedly once existed. Even if “the mere fact that [persons seeking entry] . . . claimed to be citizens would not have entitled them under the Constitution to a judicial hearing,” 2 it does not follow that rights attaching to admitted citizenship may be forfeited without a judicial hearing. To deny the rights of citizenship to one who previously enjoyed them “obviously deprives him of liberty . . . . It may result also in loss of both property and life; or of all that makes life worth living. Against the danger of such deprivation without the sanction afforded by judicial proceedings, the Fifth Amendment affords protection *383in its guarantee of due process of law. The difference in security of judicial over administrative action has been adverted to by this court.” Ng Fung Ho v. White, 259 U. S. 276, 284-285.

 Administrative Procedure Act, 5 U. S. C. § 1009; Declaratory Judgment Act, 28 TI. S. C. § 2201.

 Ng Fung Ho v. White, 259 U. S. 276, 282. See United States v. Ju Toy, 198 U. S. 253, 261:
“This petition should have been denied ..., irrespective of what more we have to say, because it alleged nothing except citizenship. It disclosed neither abuse of authority nor the existence of evidence not laid before the Secretary. It did not even set forth that evidence or allege its effect. But as it was entertained and the District Court found for the petitioner it would be a severe measure to order the petition to be dismissed on that ground now, and we pass on to further considerations.”