Court Opinion

ID: 9427735
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:21:44.653742+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:23:09.358851
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice Marshall,
concurring in part and dissenting in part.
I agree with the Court’s holding that a citizen of the United States may not lose his citizenship in the absence of a finding that he specifically intended to renounce it. I also concur in the adoption of a saving construction of 8 U. S. C. § 1481 *271(a) (2) to require that the statutorily designated expatriating acts be done with a specific intent to relinquish citizenship.
I cannot, however, accept the majority's conclusion that a person may be found to have relinquished his American citizenship upon a preponderance of the evidence that he intended to do so. The Court’s discussion of congressional power to “prescribe rules of evidence and standards of proof in the federal courts,” ante, at 265, is the beginning, not the end, of the inquiry. It remains the task of this Court to determine when those rules and standards impinge on constitutional rights. As my Brother Stevens indicates, the Court’s casual dismissal of the importance of American citizenship cannot withstand scrutiny. And the mere fact that one who has been expatriated is not locked up in a prison does not dispose of the constitutional inquiry. As Mr. Chief Justice Warren stated over 20 years ago:
“[T]he expatriate has lost the right to have rights.
“This punishment is offensive to cardinal principles for which the Constitution stands. It subjects the individual to a fate of ever-increasing fear and distress. He knows not what discriminations may be established against him, what proscriptions may be directed against him, and when and for what cause his existence in his native land may be terminated. He may be subject to banishment, a fate universally decried by civilized people. He is stateless, a condition deplored in the international community of democracies. It is no answer to suggest that all the disastrous consequences of this fate may not be brought to bear on a stateless person. The threat makes the punishment obnoxious.” Trop v. Dulles, 356 U. S. 86, 102 (1958) (plurality opinion) (footnotes omitted).
For these reasons I cannot understand, much less accept, the Court’s suggestion that “expatriation proceedings ... do not threaten a loss of liberty.” Ante, at 266. Recognizing that *272a standard of proof ultimately “ 'reflects the value society places’ ” on the interest at stake, Addington v. Texas, 441 U. S. 418, 425 (1979), I would hold that a citizen may not lose his citizenship in the absence of clear and convincing evidence that he intended to do so.