Felix Frankfurter

“ A 'foreign country' in which the United States has no territorial control does not bear the same relation to the United States as a 'foreign country' in which the United States does have the territorial control that it has in the air base in Newfoundland. ”

“ The very concept of 'sovereignty' is in a state of more or less solution these days. To find a single and undeviating content for 'foreign country' necessarily excluding these bases, while 'POSSESSIONS' OF THE UNITED STATES IS To be deemed as necessarily incLuding them, despite the momentum of historic meaning and experience leading to a contrary significance of 'possessions,' is to give the appearance of logically compulsive force to decisions. ”

“ To assume that terms like 'foreign country' and 'possessions' are self-defining, not at all involving a choice of judicial judgment, is mechanical jurisprudence at its best. These terms do not have fixed and inclusive meanings, as is true of mathematical and other scientific terms. Both 'possessions' an 'foreign country' have penumbral meanings, which is not true, for instance, of the verbal designations for weights and measures. It is this precision of content which differentiates scientific from most political, legislative and legal language. ”