Vance V. Terrazas - Opinion of The Court

Opinion of The Court

A 5-to-4 majority of the Supreme Court held, first, that it was not enough for the government to prove "the voluntary commission of an act, such as swearing allegiance to a foreign nation, that 'is so inherently inconsistent with the continued retention of American citizenship that Congress may accord to it its natural consequences, i. e., loss of nationality.'" Rather, the court held that its 1967 ruling in Afroyim v. Rusk "emphasized that loss of citizenship requires the individual's 'assent,' . . . in addition to his voluntary commission of the expatriating act"—and that "the trier of fact must in the end conclude that the citizen not only voluntarily committed the expatriating act prescribed in the statute, but also intended to relinquish his citizenship." On this point, the Supreme Court agreed with the 7th Circuit ruling in Terrazas's favor.

The majority then turned its attention to the question of a standard of proof in loss-of-citizenship cases. Terrazas had argued—and the 7th Circuit had agreed—that the 14th Amendment, as interpreted in Afroyim, had left Congress without any constitutional authority to set the standard of proof for intent to relinquish citizenship at a level any lower than one of clear and convincing evidence. The Supreme Court majority rejected this claim and held that Congress was within its rights to specify a standard of preponderance of evidence (i.e., more likely than not) when cases alleging loss of U.S. citizenship were involved.

Finally, the Supreme Court majority upheld the validity of another aspect of the law as enacted by Congress—namely, that it was all right for the government to assume that a potentially expatriating act had been performed voluntarily, and that any claim that a person had acted under duress was up to the person involved to establish by preponderance of evidence.

The Supreme Court did not explicitly rule on whether or not Terrazas had lost his U.S. citizenship; rather, it remanded the case back to the original trial court (a Federal District Court in Illinois) for further proceedings consistent with the Supreme Court's ruling.

Although the court's membership was divided on the question of whether a "preponderance of evidence" standard was sufficient for establishing someone's intent to give up their U.S. citizenship, all nine justices — the five who joined in the majority opinion, and also the four who dissented (see below), unanimously agreed with the key holding in Afroyim v. Rusk that U.S. citizenship was safeguarded by the Fourteenth Amendment and could not be taken away by an act of Congress from a person who had not wanted to give it up.

Read more about this topic:  Vance V. Terrazas

Famous quotes containing the words opinion of, opinion and/or court:

    The little I know of it has not served to raise my opinion of what is vulgarly called the “Monied Interest;” I mean, that blood-sucker, that muckworm, that calls itself “the friend of government.”
    William, Earl Of Pitt (1708–1778)

    The peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is, that it is robbing the human race; posterity as well as the existing generation; those who dissent from the opinion, still more than those who hold it. If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth: if wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error.
    John Stuart Mill (1806–1873)

    Follow a shaddow, it still flies you;
    Seeme to flye it, it will pursue:
    So court a mistris, shee denyes you;
    Let her alone, shee will court you.
    Say, are not women truely, then,
    Stil’d but the shaddowes of us men?
    At morne, and even, shades are longest;
    At noone, they are or short, or none:
    So men at weakest, they are strongest,
    But grant us perfect, they’re not knowne.
    Say, are not women truely, then,
    Stil’d but the shaddowes of us men?
    Ben Jonson (1572–1637)