Law Commons^™

Territorial Exceptionalism And The Americanwelfare State, Andrew Hammond

Michigan Law Review

Federal law excludes millions of American citizens from crucial public benefits simply because they live in the United States territories. If the Social Security Administration determines a low-income individual has a disability, that person can move to another state and continue to receive benefits. But if that person moves to, say, Guam or the U.S. Virgin Islands, that person loses their right to federal aid. Similarly with SNAP (food stamps), federal spending rises with increased demand—whether because of a recession, a pandemic, or a climate disaster. But unlike the rest of the United States, Puerto Rico, the Northern Mariana Islands, …

A Perfectly Empty Gift, Christina D. Ponsa-Kraus

Michigan Law Review

A Review of Almost Citizens: Puerto Rico, the U.S. Constitution, and Empire. by Sam Erman.

Racial Purges, Robert L. Tsai

Michigan Law Review

Review of Beth Lew-Williams' The Chinese Must Go: Violence, Exclusion, and the Making of the Alien in America.

The Citizenship Shibboleth: Is The American Dream Everyone Else's Nightmare?, Emily Marr

Michigan Law Review

The American Dream is a trope with global reach. Although the "city upon a hill" may have lost some of its luster in recent years, the idea that America is a country where citizens can rise above "the fortuitous circumstances of birth or position" largely continues to resonate. Professor Ayelet Shachar's provocative new book, however, suggests otherwise. In The Birthright Lottery, Shachar condemns birthright citizenship laws as a feudal anachronism analogous to an inherited-property regime. For her, birthright citizenship in a prosperous nation confers a morally arbitrary windfall that determines life opportunities (pp. 4-7). Shachar further argues that in a …

Profiting From Not For Profit: Toward Adequate Humanities Instruction In American K-12 Schools, Eli Savit

Michigan Law Review

Martha Nussbaum' describes Not For Profit: Why Democracy Needs the Humanities-her paean to a humanities-rich education-as a "manifesto, not an empirical study" (p. 121). Drawing on contemporary psychological research and classic pedagogical theories, Nussbaum convincingly argues that scholastic instruction in the humanities is a critical tool in shaping democratic citizens. Nussbaum shows how the study of subjects like literature, history, philosophy, and art helps students build essential democratic capacities like empathy and critical thought. Through myriad examples and anecdotes, Not For Profit sketches an appealing vision of what an ideal education should be in a democracy.

The End Of Citizenship?, Jonathan Weinberg

Michigan Law Review

Part I of this Review challenges his view that the value of American citizenship is in decline. Part II critiques his discussion of the lines drawn by citizenship law-who is or can become a citizen-and what those lines mean for the nature of citizenship in the modem age. This Part urges that the lack of fit between our citizenship rules and the goal of organic community is hardly new; it was a feature of our citizenship law long before current globalization trends. Part III discusses the meaning of citizenship, and the basis for citizenship and immigration exclusions, in the context …

Can Courts Repair The Crumbling Foundation Of Good Citizenship? An Examination Of Potential Legal Challenges To Social Studies Cutbacks In Public Schools, Eli Savit

Michigan Law Review

In the wake of No Child Left Behind, many public schools have cut or eliminated social studies instruction to allot more time for math and literacy. Given courts' repeated celebration of education as the "foundation of good citizenship," this Note examines potential legal claims and litigation strategies that could be used to compel social studies instruction in public schools. This Note contends that the federal judiciary's civic conception of education leaves the door slightly ajar for a Fourteenth Amendment chrallenge on behalf of social studies-deprived students, but the Supreme Court's refusal in San Antonio v. Rodriguez to recognize education as …

The Citizenship Paradox In A Transnational Age, Cristina M. Rodríguez

Michigan Law Review

Through Americans in Waiting, Hiroshi Motomura tells us three different stories about how U.S. law and policy, over time, have framed the relationship between immigrants and the American body politic. He captures the complexity, historical contingency, and democratic urgency of that relationship by canvassing the immigration law canon and teasing from it the three frameworks that have structured immigrants' social status, their interactions with the state, and the processes of immigrant integration and naturalization. In so doing, he illuminates how popular mythologies about the assimilative capacity of the American melting pot obscure myriad political and social conflicts over how …

An "Unintended Consequence": Dred Scott Reinterpreted, Sam Erman

Michigan Law Review

Austin Allen's monograph marks the 150th anniversary of the decision in Dred Scott v. Sandford with a revisionist interpretation of that oft-examined case. Many scholars have portrayed the case as a proslavery decision that fanned sectional fires. After all, the Court held that blacks were not U.S. citizens and that Congress was impotent to bar slavery in U.S. territories. Allen, by contrast, understands the case primarily as a judicial attempt to rationalize federal commerce and slavery jurisprudences. Part I argues that this ambitious reinterpretation enriches, but does not topple, existing Dred Scott historiography. In the case of the Court's citizenship …

Impossible Subjects: Illegal Aliens And Alien Citizens, Leti Volpp

Michigan Law Review

America is a nation of immigrants, according to our national narrative. This is the America with its gates open to the world, as well as the America of the melting pot. Underpinning this national narrative is a very particular story of immigration that foregrounds the inclusion of immigrants, rather than their exclusion. Highlighted in this story is the period before 1924, of relatively unfettered European immigration, and the period after 1965, post the lifting of national origins quotas. Also underlying this national narrative is a particular story about what happens once immigrants enter. In this story the immigrant traverses smoothly …

Disease And Cure?, L. A. Powe Jr.

Michigan Law Review

Sunstein uses Franklin's remark to make two related points. First, citizens bear the burden of maintaining the American republic as a healthy, vibrant place; being a citizen is decidedly different from being a consumer. The former has duties, the latter wants (pp. 113-23). Second, and this is the gist of the slender book, the republic is jeopardized by the possibilities of the Internet. Sunstein assumes the correctness of MIT technology specialist Nicholas Negroponte's conclusion that in the not-too-distant future we will be able to create a "Daily Me" on the Internet that will provide the personalized information (including news) that …

Marriage And Belonging, Ann Laquer Estin

Michigan Law Review

Marriage is a quintessentially private institution. Justice Douglas put the point this way in 1965, writing for the Supreme Court in Griswold v. Connecticut: "We deal with a right of privacy older than the Bill of Rights - older than our political parties, older than our school system. Marriage is a coming together for better or for worse, hopefully enduring, and intimate to the degree of being sacred. It is an association that promotes a way of life, not causes; a harmony in living, not political faiths; a bilateral loyalty, not commercial or social projects. Yet it is an association …

Lynching Ethics: Toward A Theory Of Racialized Defenses, Anthony V. Alfieri

Michigan Law Review

So much depends upon a rope in Mobile, Alabama. To hang Michael Donald, Henry Hays and James "Tiger" Knowles tied up "a piece of nylon rope about twenty feet long, yellow nylon." They borrowed the rope from Frank Cox, Hays's brother-in-law. Cox "went out in the back" of his mother's "boatshed, or something like that, maybe it was in the lodge." He "got a rope," climbed into the front seat of Hays's Buick Wildcat, and handed it to Knowles sitting in the back seat. So much depends upon a noose. Knowles "made a hangman's noose out of the rope," thirteen …

Rhetorical Slavery, Rhetorical Citizenship, Gerald L. Neuman

Michigan Law Review

A Review of American Citizenship: The Quest for Inclusion by Judith N. Shklar

Constituting Communities Through Words That Bind: Reflections On Loyalty Oaths, Sanford Levinson

Michigan Law Review

Preparation of this essay has not served to resolve my own ambivalences about what, after all, Duncan Kennedy once named the "fundamental contradiction" of all social life, the tension between "individual freedom" and the coercive communal life with "[o]thers (family, friends, bureaucrats, cultural figures, the state)" that is "necessary if we are to become persons at all - they provide us the stuff of our selves and protect us ,in crucial ways against destruction." It should not be surprising if something so fundamental does not prove amenable to resolution. In any case, the reader should not expect to find a …

Theories Of Loss Of Citizenship, T. Alexander Aleinikoff

Michigan Law Review

The underlying issue that I address in this essay is whether the Constitution ought to be read to prohibit denationalization of U.S. citizens. (I will use the term "denationalization" to refer to the government's act of terminating citizenship. "Expatriation" will be used to refer to an individual's voluntary relinquishment of citizenship.) In examining this question, I will explore citizenship from four different perspectives - rights, consent, contract, and community - in search of a theoretical framework for the Supreme Court's doctrine in the denationalization cases.

Community, Citizenship, And The Search For National Identity, Frederick Schauer

Michigan Law Review

As a test of this proposition, I want to explore the issue of alienage restrictions. Under what circumstances is it justifiable to draw lines based on whether a person is a citizen? Lines drawn on the basis of citizenship are a useful test of how seriously we take the idea of the nation as a relevant community and, more tangentially, of how seriously we take the idea of community itself. To the extent that we are skeptical of such lines, our concerns are to that extent individual-oriented, primarily focused on the adverse consequences of excluding some people from benefits or …

Claims Of Dual Nationals In The Modern Era: The Iran-United States Claims Tribunal, Michigan Law Review

Michigan Law Review

This Note will discuss the considerations, implicit in the Tribunal's opinion, that support substituting the doctrine of dominant and effective nationality for the rule of state nonresponsibility in cases involving claims of dual nationals. Part I of this Note briefly examines the traditional framework of diplomatic protection and demonstrates that the policies supporting the doctrine of state nonresponsibility are anachronistic and that strict adherence to them leads to inequitable results. Part II argues that the doctrine of dominant and effective nationality is the preferred standard for determining the status of dual national claims. At the core of this doctrine is …

The Second Generation Of Immigrants, Henry G. Schermers

Michigan Law Review

During the 1960s, many workers from the Mediterranean region migrated to more northerly regions of Europe. Often they brought their wives, and children were born in the host country. The situation of these children, the "second generation" of immigrants, deserves our attention.

In many respects the offspring who make up this second generation of immigrants are closer to their country of residence than to the country of their parents. Yet the desirability of integrating these young people into the country where they were born and live may be questioned. If they are able to speak their parents' language, they could …

The Schneiderman Case: An Inside View Of The Roosevelt Court, Jeffrey F. Liss

Michigan Law Review

Only rarely in the study of Supreme Court history do events, personalities, records, and historical sources converge to afford an intimate view of that institution. Schneiderman v. United States, in its own right an important decision in the field of denaturalization law, provides such an opportunity. The manuscript collections of the major adversaries on the Court are well-preserved, and a surviving major figure from among the parties to ·the litigation has provided personal insight into the intricacies of the case.

Constitutional Law - Citizenship - Draft -Avoidance Statute Declared Unconstitutional, Ralph L. Wright

Michigan Law Review

In 1951 plaintiff, a native-born American citizen, went to England for temporary work, as a physician and research physiologist. In 1953 his draft board ordered him to report for induction but he failed to comply with the order. The State Department then issued an administrative order expatriating plaintiff for remaining outside the United States for the purpose of avoiding service in the armed forces in violation of section 349 (a) (10) of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952. In a declaratory judgment suit before a three-judge court, held, section 349 (a) (10) is unconstitutional. Expatriation of United States …

The Constitutions Of West Germany And The United States: A Comparative Study, Paul G. Kauper

Michigan Law Review

The purpose of this article is to present a descriptive overall picture of the fundamental features of the system established by the Basic Law and at the same time point up significant comparisons and contrasts by reference to the Constitution. Eleven years have now elapsed since the Basic Law went into effect, and significant decisions of the Federal Constitutional Court (Bundesverfassungsgericht ) noted at the appropriate points, serve to illuminate the working of the system established by it.

The Supreme Court - October 1957 Term, Bernard Schwartz

Michigan Law Review

One of the fascinating new games being played by some law professors and others," declared an American Bar Association Journal editorial almost a decade ago, "is to compute the 'box scores' of the votes of justices of the Supreme Court in various important lines of cases."' The present article is not intended as an addition to the work of those engaged in this sort of "numbers game." However useful the statistical method may be in providing the empirical data upon which legal analysis can be based, it should be almost self-evident that its value as the key to the working …

Constitutional Law - Citizenship - Power Of Congress To Effect Involuntary Expatriation, Robert J. Hoerner S.Ed.

Michigan Law Review

In four recent cases the United States Supreme Court has dealt with the power of Congress to effect the denationalization of native-born citizens without their consent. Three cases, Perez v. Brownell, Trop v. Dulles, and Mendoza-Martinez v. Mackey dealt with the constitutionality of sections 401(e), 401(g) and 401(j), respectively, of the Nationality Act of 1940. The fourth case, Nishikawa v. Dulles dealt only with the burden of proof when duress is alleged under section 401(c), but contained one opinion of constitutional significance. The purpose of this comment is to analyze and evaluate these decisions.

Aliens - Denaturalization - Requirement That The Governmnet Be Deceived In Naturalization Proceeding As Basis For Denaturalization, Charles B. Renfrew S.Ed.

Michigan Law Review

Defendant Umberto Anastasio, arrived in this country as a deserting seaman in 1917. A certificate of registry was granted in 1931 upon the fraudulent allegation in his application and testimony before an immigration inspector that he had never been arrested. After filing other papers necessary for naturalization, defendant was issued a certificate of arrival in 1933 based on the certificate of registry. Before obtaining citizenship, however, defendant executed an affidavit which revealed his criminal record and filed a consent of dismissal of his petition for naturalization in 1935. In 1942, while in the United States Army, defendant applied for naturalization …

Federal Procedure - Jurisdiction - Suit Under Direct Action Statute Where There Is Diversity Of Citizenship Between Claimant And Insurer But Not Between Claimant And Wrongdoer, William R. Jentes

Michigan Law Review

Plaintiff, a citizen of Louisiana, was injured in an automobile accident allegedly caused by the negligence of another citizen of Louisiana. Defendant insurance company, an Illinois corporation, had issued a public liability policy insuring the latter against claims arising from the negligent operation of his car. Pursuant to a Louisiana statutory provision that "the injured person or his or her heirs, at their option, shall have a right of direct action . . . against the insurer alone or against both the insured and the insurer, jointly and in solido,'' respondent brought an action against the petitioner alone in the …

International Law-Reservations To Commercial Treaties Dealing With Aliens' Plights To Engage In The Professions, Alan Reeve Hunt S.Ed.

Michigan Law Review

The question of how far an alien may engage in a profession despite state requirements of citizenship which attach to many professions has not been widely litigated or discussed in this country. Recent action by the United States Senate, however, has created interest in problems presented by commercial treaty provisions which guarantee to alien nationals of many countries the right to engage in professions. Attention has thus been focused on law and policy questions which were formerly of little concern outside of the State Department. On July 21, 1953 the Senate gave its advice and consent to the ratification of …

Aliens - Naturalization - Netural Aliens Who Sought Relief From Military Service Barred From Becoming United States Citizens, John Houck S.Ed.

Michigan Law Review

During World War II, an alien who was a citizen or a subject of a neutral country was allowed to escape service in the armed forces of the United States by signing Selective Service Form DSS 301. A release thus obtained carried with it a disability ever to become a citizen of the United States. A substantial number of neutral aliens availed themselves of this relief from military service. Today, the courts are faced with the problem of whether signing Form 301 shall in every case prevent the alien from becoming a citizen. It is the purpose of this comment …

Constitutional Law-Equal Protection-Validity Of State Restraints On Alien Ownership Of Land, Alfred W. Blumrosen S.Ed.

Michigan Law Review

In the short period of five years, action on three governmental fronts has solved one problem of state legislation which seemed to violate a basic premise of the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Congress, the Supreme Court and the courts of last resort of two states have acted to destroy the effectiveness of state laws which prohibited ownership of land by aliens ineligible for citizenship. These laws incorporated whatever classification Congress established for naturalization purposes into state statutes determining rights to own land. This process has resulted in recent years in discrimination against Orientals, particularly Japanese. The purpose …

Aliens-Naturalization Proceedings-Is Alleged Communist Attached To Principles Of Constitution?, Paul E. Anderson

Michigan Law Review

Seeking citizenship status, petitioner filed a formal petition for naturalization, introduced affidavits of two citizens as to his character, and testified under oath that he would support the Constitution. The Immigration and Naturalization Service opposed his petition on the ground that he failed to show a proper attachment to the principles of the Constitution as required by the Nationality Act. On hearing, proof was made that petitioner was a member and officer of the International Workers Order, an organization labeled by the House Committee on Un-American Activities as a Communist front. Testimony of an immigration inspector that petitioner had the …