Law Commons^™

Federalism And Equal Citizenship: The Constitutional Case For D.C. Statehood, Jessica Bulman-Pozen, Olatunde C.A. Johnson

Faculty Scholarship

As the question of D.C. statehood commands national attention, the legal discourse remains stilted. The constitutional question we should be debating is not whether statehood is permitted but whether it is required.

Commentators have been focusing on the wrong constitutional provisions. The Founding document and the Twenty-Third Amendment do not resolve D.C.’s status. The Reconstruction Amendments — and the principle of federated, equal citizenship they articulate — do. The Fourteenth Amendment’s Citizenship Clause, as glossed by subsequent amendments, not only establishes birthright national citizenship and decouples it from race and caste but also makes state citizenship a constitutive component of …

A Perfectly Empty Gift, Christina D. Ponsa-Kraus

Faculty Scholarship

“Almost citizens.” What does that even mean? It’s like being “kind of pregnant,” isn’t it? In other words, nonsense. Citizenship isn’t an “almost” kind of thing. It’s all or nothing. Unless, I suppose, the word “almost” is used in a simple temporal sense – as in, “Our naturalization ceremony is tomorrow. We’re almost citizens! Yay!” There, the phrase “almost citizens” makes sense. Otherwise not. Right?

Wrong. “Almost citizens,” in a sense as ambiguous as it sounds, is what Almost Citizens: Puerto Rico, the U S Constitution, and Empire is about. “Almost citizens” describes what Puerto Ricans were from 1898, when …

Equality, Sovereignty, And The Family In Morales-Santana, Kristin Collins

Faculty Scholarship

In Sessions v. Morales-Santana, ³ the Supreme Court encountered a body of citizenship law that has long relied on family membership in the construction of the nation’s borders and the composition of the polity.⁴ The particular statute at issue in the case regulates the transmission of citizenship from American parents to their foreign-born children at birth, a form of citizenship known today as derivative citizenship.⁵ When those children are born outside marriage, the derivative citizenship statute makes it more difficult for American fathers, as compared with American mothers, to transmit citizenship to their foreign-born children.⁶ Over …

Constitution And The Laws Of War During The Civil War, The Federal Courts, Practice & Procedure, Andrew Kent

Faculty Scholarship

This Article uncovers the forgotten complex of relationships between the U.S. Constitution, citizenship and the laws of war. The Supreme Court today believes that both noncitizens and citizens who are military enemies in a congressionally-authorized war are entitled to judicially-enforceable rights under the Constitution. The older view was that the U.S. government’s military actions against noncitizen enemies were not limited by the Constitution, but only by the international laws of war. On the other hand, in the antebellum period, the prevailing view was U.S. citizenship should carry with it protection from ever being treated as a military enemy under the …

Mr. Justice Miller's Clause: The Privileges Or Immunities Of Citizens Of The United States Internationally, David S. Bogen

Faculty Scholarship

Justice Miller’s list in the Slaughter-House Cases of privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States includes a significant number of international ones. This article examines the international dimensions of the Fourteenth Amendment’s privileges or immunities clause. These include the ability to engage in international trade and commerce; the protection of person and property abroad; the rights secured to individual citizens by treaties of the United States; and the privileges and immunities available under customary international law to the extent that the federal government behaves consistently with such rights. In addition to describing the privileges or immunities, the article …

"They Say I Am Not An American…": The Noncitizen National And The Law Of American Empire, Christina Duffy Ponsa-Kraus

Faculty Scholarship

The American papers sometimes contain tales about persons who have forgotten who they are, what are their names, and where they live. The Porto [sic] Ricans find themselves in the same predicament as those absent-minded people. To what nationality do they belong? What is the character of their citizenship? ... [l]f since they ceased to be Spanish citizens they have not been Americans [sic] citizens, what in the name ·of heaven have they been?

Democracy And Feminism , Tracy E. Higgins

Faculty Scholarship

Although feminist legal theory has had an important impact on most areas of legal doctrine and theory over the last two decades, its contribution to the debate over constitutional interpretation has been comparatively small. In this Article, Professor Higgins explores reasons for the limited dialogue between mainstream constitutional theory and feminist theory concerning questions of democracy, constitutionalism, and judicial review. She argues that mainstream constitutional theory tends to take for granted the capacity of the individual to make choices, leaving the social construction of those choices largely unexamined. In contrast, feminist legal theory's emphasis on the importance of constraints on …

What States Owe Outsiders, Matthew D. Adler

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.