Law Commons^™

Defining American: The Dream Act, Immigration Reform And Citizenship, Elizabeth Keyes

All Faculty Scholarship

The grassroots movement propelling the DREAM Act and immigration reform forward reveals how the definition of citizenship is undergoing a dramatic transformation, in ways both inspiring and troubling. The DREAM movement depends upon the compelling but exceptional stories of passionate, high-achieving, law-abiding youth who already define themselves as being American, and worthy of legal status. Situating this narrative in the rich literature of citizenship, the article shows how the DREAM movement effectively exposes the disjuncture between the DREAMers' identity as Americans and their lack of legal immigration status. The article celebrates how this narrative succeeds as a contrast to the …

Immigration, Sovereignty, And The Constitution Of Foreignness, Matthew Lindsay

All Faculty Scholarship

It is a central premise of modern American immigration law that immigrants, by virtue of their non-citizenship, are properly subject to an extra-constitutional regulatory authority that is inherent in national sovereignty and buffered against judicial review. The Supreme Court first posited this constitutionally exceptional authority, which is commonly known as the “plenary power doctrine,” in the 1889 Chinese Exclusion Case. There, the Court reconstructed the federal immigration power from a form of commercial regulation rooted in Congress’s commerce power, to an instrument of national self-defense against invading hordes of economically and racially degraded foreigners.

Today, generations after the United States …