Legal Commentary

Hillary Clinton's Bizarre Statement On Citizenship Stripping

By Big Tent Democrat

NYTimes:

Several major Democratic officials spoke positively about the proposal, including Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton. Noting that the State Department already had the authority to rescind the citizenship of people who declare allegiance to a foreign state, she said the administration would take “a hard look” at extending those powers to cover terrorism suspects.

“United States citizenship is a privilege,” she said. “It is not a right. People who are serving foreign powers — or in this case, foreign terrorists — are clearly in violation, in my personal opinion, of that oath which they swore when they became citizens.”

(Emphasis supplied.) This is incorrect as a legal matter in my view. The 14th Amendment states that:

"All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside."

Once you have become a citizen (by being born in the United States (as defined by Congress) or having become a naturalized citizen), your citizenship, and the rights the attach to it (for example, the right to vote) are rights that can not be taken from you without due process.

As John Bellinger, a legal adviser to the Bush Administration State Department, notes:

the Lieberman bill “sounds like a draconian solution. I assume the Senate has thought through the constitutional issues but I would want to see what the standards are for stripping someone of their citizenship and what opportunities they would have for notice and to challenge the decision... It certainly seems like a far-reaching step."

I doubt Senator Lieberman has considered these points. And neither has, it seems, the Secretary of State.

Speaking for me only

Full post as published by TalkLeft on May 07, 2010 (boomark / email).