Potter Stewart

“ We find nothing in the statutory language, in the legislative history, or in our prior decisions which leads us to believe that Congress had any such purpose.
The Administrative Procedure Act confers the right to judicial review of 'any agency action.' The procedures of § 360 (b) and (c) would culminate in litigation not against the Secretary of State whose determination is here being attacked, but against the Attorney General. ”

“ Thus, the question posed is whether the procedures specified in § 360 (b) and (c) provide the only method of reviewing the Secretary of State's determination that Cort has forfeited his citizenship. More precisely stated, the question in this case is whether, despite the liberal provisions of the Administrative Procedure Act, Congress intended that a native of this country living abroad must travel thousands of miles, be arrested, and go to jail in order to attack an administrative finding that he is not a citizen of the United States. ”

“ As a matter simply of grammatical construction, it seems obvious that the 'such person' referred to in the Committee Report is a person who has chosen to obtain a certificate of identity and to seek admission to the United States in order to prosecute his claim. The appellee in the present case is, of course, not such a person.
This legislative history is sufficient, we think, to show that the purpose of § 360 (b) and (c) was to cut off the opportunity which aliens had abused under § 503 of the 1940 Act to gain fraudulent entry to the United States by prosecuting spurious citizenship claims. ”