Citizenship

by

Stephen L. Corrigan

What are the characteristics that identify one as a citizen of the United States?  
Section 1. of the fourteenth amendment of the U. S. Constitution states the following:


"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.  No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States nor shall any state deprive any person of life,  liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws."


This amendment clarifies that a citizen of the United States is one who is a member of the political association called "The United States of America" either by having parents at birth who are members of the association or by entering into a covenant with its citizens by the process called naturalization. As a member of the association, they have all the same civil rights as all the other members of the association have including the right to reside in any of the States of the association they so desire. Land does not form associations, people do. In America, the requirement for membership in the association called "The United States of America"  has always been allegiance. Associations can not exist without allegiance. In return for that allegiance, protection is provided. The Supreme Court in Minor v. Happersett, 88 U.S. 162 (1875) declared the following:


"Before its adoption the Constitution of the United States did not in terms prescribe who should be citizens of the United States or of the several States, yet there were necessarily such citizens without such provision. There cannot be a nation without a people. The very idea of a political community, such as a nation is, implies an association of persons for the promotion of their general welfare. Each one of the persons associated becomes a member of the nation formed by the association. He owes it allegiance and is entitled to its protection. Allegiance and protection are, in this connection, reciprocal obligations. The one is a compensation for the other; allegiance for protection and protection for allegiance."


"For convenience it has been found necessary to give a name to this membership. The object is to designate by a title the person and the relation he bears to the nation. For this purpose the words "subject," "inhabitant," and "citizen"  have been used, and the choice between them is sometimes made to depend upon the form of the government.  Citizen is now more commonly employed,   however, and as it has been considered better suited to the description of one living under a republican government, it was adopted by nearly all of the States upon their separation from Great Britain, and was afterwards adopted in the Articles of Confederation and in the Constitution of the United States. When used in this sense it is understood as conveying the idea of membership of a nation, and nothing more."



"To determine, then, who were citizens of the United States before the adoption of the amendment it is necessary to ascertain what persons originally associated themselves together to form the nation, and what were afterwards admitted to membership.  Looking at the Constitution itself  we find that it was ordained and established by "the people of the United States,"  and then going further back, we find that these were the people of the several States that had before dissolved the political bands which connected them with Great Britain, and assumed a separate and equal station among the powers of the earth,  and that had by Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union, in which they took the name of "the United States of America," entered into a firm league of  friendship with each other for their common defence, the security of their liberties and their mutual and general welfare, binding themselves to assist each other against all force offered to or attack made upon them, or any of them, on account of religion, sovereignty, trade, or any other pretence whatever."


"Whoever, then, was one of the people of either of these States when the Constitution of the United States was adopted, became ipso facto a citizen -- a member of the nation created by its adoption. He was one of the persons associating together to form the nation, and was, consequently, one of its original citizens. As to this there has never been a doubt."