While
we await the Supreme Court’s decision in United
States v. Arizona,
other weighty issues of immigration and citizenship continue to defy resolution
and generate academic debate. Take, for
instance, the issue of territorial birthright citizenship: Will the United States abandon its
historical practice of jus soli? Debates on this issue frequently invoke
historical antecedents. Not just
domestic history, either. The 1961
Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness favors jus soli by stipulating the norm that an important measure to avoid
statelessness at birth is to provide nationality to children born on the
territory who would otherwise be stateless.
I was
fortunate to participate in a superb conference on this subject (April 19-21 at
Boston College), titled Citizenship in
Question: Evidentiary Challenges for Jus
Soli. The co-sponsors included The
Boston College Center for Human Rights and International Justice, the Institute
for the Liberal Arts, Boston College Law School, the University
of Pennsylvania, the Rochester
Institute of Technology and Northeastern
University. The program, with list of participants and
paper titles, is available here. Look for
speedy publication of the papers, which will be of great benefit particularly with
respect to comparative citizenship practices. Update: A conference report, with summaries and paper abstracts, is now available here.
The
conference touched on what has always struck me as an intriguing historical
phenomenon. Citizenship by birth on the territory – the
jus soli – is largely a New World phenomenon:
Not just the United States
and Canada, but Mexico, and, with one or two exceptions, all of central and south America. The rest of the world primarily follows the jus
sanguinis. What is interesting is that jus soli is customarily associated with common law
legal systems, while civil law countries are committed to jus sanguinis. Except in the Americas. Perhaps there is a hemispheric treatment of
the historical origins of jus soli in
the Americas. If not, a timely opportunity beckons...
