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Old 10-15-2010, 10:25 AM
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ilbegone ilbegone is offline
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387 U.S. 253 (1967)

AFROYIM v. RUSK, SECRETARY OF STATE.
No. 456.

Supreme Court of United States.
Argued February 20, 1967.
Decided May 29, 1967.



Quote:
Because the legislative history of the Fourteenth Amendment and of the expatriation proposals which preceded and followed it, like most other legislative history, contains many statements from which conflicting inferences can be drawn, our holding might be unwarranted if it rested entirely or principally upon that legislative history. But it does not. Our holding we think is the only one that can stand in view of the language and the purpose of the Fourteenth Amendment, and our construction of that Amendment, we believe, comports more nearly than Perez with the principles of liberty and equal justice to all that the entire Fourteenth Amendment was adopted to guarantee.

Citizenship is no light trifle 268*268 to be jeopardized any moment Congress decides to do so under the name of one of its general or implied grants of power. 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 co-operative affair. Its citizenry is the country and the country is its citizenry.

The very nature of our free government makes it completely incongruous to have a rule of law under which a group of citizens temporarily in office can deprive another group of citizens of their citizenship. We hold that the Fourteenth Amendment was designed to, and does, protect every citizen of this Nation against a congressional forcible destruction of his citizenship, whatever his creed, color, or race. Our holding does no more than to give to this citizen that which is his own, a constitutional right to remain a citizen in a free country unless he voluntarily relinquishes that citizenship.
This one needs a read through, the ruling isn't condensed at the top.

More of the Supreme Court's decision... http://scholar.google.com/scholar_ca...=1&oi=scholarr
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Last edited by ilbegone; 10-15-2010 at 10:58 AM.
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