Hugo Black

“ Our Constitution governs us and we must never forget that our Constitution limits the Government to those powers specifically granted or those that are necessary and proper to carry out the specifically granted ones. ”

“ Once obtained, citizenship is of course protected from arbitrary withdrawal by the constraints placed around Congress' powers by the Constitution; it is not proper to create from the Citizenship Clause an additional, and entirely unwarranted, restriction upon legislative authority. The construction now placed on the Citizenship Clause rests, in the last analysis, simply on the Court's ipse dixit, evincing little more, it is quite apparent, than the present majority's own distaste for the expatriation power. ”

“ First we reject the idea xp ressed in Perez that, aside from the Fourteenth Amendment, Congress has any general power, express or implied, to take away an American citizen's citizenship without his assent. This power cannot, as Perez indicated, be sustained as an implied attribute of sovereignty possessed by all nations. Other nations are governed by their own constitutions, if any, and we can draw no support from theirs. In our country the people are sovereign and the Government cannot sever its relationship to the people by taking away their citizenship. ”

“ Quoting Chief Justice Marshall's well-considered and oft-repeated dictum in Osborn to the effect that Congress under the power of naturalization has 'a power to confer citizenship, not a power to take it away,' the Court said:
'Congress having no power to abridge the rights conferred by the constitution upon those who have become naturalized citizens by virtue of acts of congress, a fortiori no act * * * of congress * * * can affect citizenship acquired as a birthright by virtue of the constitution itself * * *. ”

“ The central issue before the Court in Osborn was the right of the bank to bring its suit for equitable relief in the courts of the United States. In argument, counsel for Osborn had asserted that although the bank had been created by the laws of the United States, it dis not necessarily follow that any cause involving the bank had arisen under those laws. Counsel urged by analogy that the naturalization of an alien might as readily be said to confer upon the new citizen a right to bring all his actions in the federal courts. ”

“ By 1818, however, almost no one doubted the existence of the right of voluntary expatriation, but several judicial decisions had indicated that the right could not be exercised by the citizen without the consent of the Federal Government in the form of enabling legislation. [10] Therefore, a bill was introduced to provide that a person could voluntarily relinquish his citizenship by declaring such relinquishment in writing before a district court and then departing from the country. ”

“ Congress has an implied power to deal with foreign affairs as an indispensable attribute of sovereignty; this implied power, plus the Necessary and Proper Clause, empowers Congress to regulate voting by American citizens in foreign elections; involuntary expatriation is within the 'ample scope' of 'appropriate modes' Congress can adopt to effectuate its general regulatory power. ”

“ No conservativeminded statesman, no intelligent legislator, no sound lawyer has ever maintained any such power in any branch of the Government. The lawless precedents created in the delirium of war * * * of sending men by force into exile, as a punishment for political opinion, were violations of this great law * * * of the Constitution. * * * The men who debated the question in 1818 failed to see the true distinction. * * * They failed to comprehend that it is not the Government, but that it is the individual, who has the right and the only power of expatriation. ”

“ Further, the executive authorities of the United States repeatedly acted, in the 40 years following 1868, upon the premise that a citizen might automatically be deemed to have expatriated himself by conduct short of a voluntary renunciation of citizenship; individual citizens were, as the Court indicated in Perez, regularly held on this basis to have lost their citizenship. Interested Members of Congress, and others, could scarcely have been unaware of the practice ”

“ In some instances, loss of citizenship can mean that a man is left without the protection of citizenship in any country in the world-as a man without a country. Citizenship in this Nation is a part of a cooperative affair. ”

“ That it was a delicate power, and ought not to be loosely inferred, * * * appeared in a strong light, when it was said, and could not be denied, that to determine the manner in which a citizen may relinquish his right of citizenship, is equivalent to determining how he shall be divested of that right. The effect of assuming the exercise of these powers will be, that by acts of Congress a man may not only be released from all the liabilities, but from all the privileges of a citizen. ”

“ This second explanation is fully substantiated by the debate in 1818; the statements from that debate set out in the opinion for the Court were, as I have noted, bottomed on the reasoning that since allegiance given by an individual to a State could not be dissolved by Congress, a federal statute could not regulate expatriation. It surely follows that this 'obscure enterprise' [46] in 1810, motivated by now discredited constitutional premises, cannot offer any significant guidance for solution of the important issues now before us. ”

“ These three statements must instead be taken as representative only of the beliefs of three members, premised chiefly upon constitutional doctrines which have subsequently been rejected, and expressed in a debate in which the present issues were not directly involved. ”

“ Chief Justice White, who joined the Court's opinions in both Wong Kim Ark and Mackenzie, thought that Wong Kim Ark required the result reached by the Court today. Nor, it must be supposed, did the other six members of the Court who joined Mackenzie, despite Wong Kim Ark.↑ The various revisions of the proposed amendment may be traced through 20 Annals of Cong. 530, 549, 572-573, 635, 671.↑ Ames, The Proposed Amendments to the Constitution of the United States during the First Century of Its History, 2 Ann.Rep.Am.Hist. Assn. ”