Perez v. Brownell | |
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Argued May 1, 1957 Reargued October 28, 1957 Decided March 31, 1958 | |
Full case name | Clemente Martinez Perez v. Herbert Brownell Jr., Attorney General |
Citations | 356 U.S. 44 (more) 78 S. Ct. 568; 2 L. Ed. 2d 603; 1958 U.S. LEXIS 1283 |
Case history | |
Prior | Certiorari to the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit |
Holding | |
Congress has the power to revoke a person's United States citizenship as a result of the voluntary performance of specified actions (such as voting in a foreign election), even in the absence of any intent or desire to lose citizenship. | |
Court membership | |
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Case opinions | |
Majority | Frankfurter, joined by Burton, Clark, Harlan, Brennan |
Dissent | Warren, joined by Black, Douglas |
Dissent | Douglas, joined by Black |
Dissent | Whittaker |
Laws applied | |
Nationality Act of 1940; U.S. Const. amend. XIV | |
Overruled by | |
Afroyim v. Rusk, 387 U.S. 253 (1967) |
Part of a series on |
Chicanos and Mexican Americans |
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Perez v. Brownell, 356 U.S. 44 (1958), was a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court affirmed Congress's right to revoke United States citizenship as a result of a citizen's voluntary performance of specified actions, even in the absence of any intent or desire on the person's part to lose citizenship. Specifically, the Supreme Court upheld an act of Congress which provided for revocation of citizenship as a consequence of voting in a foreign election.[1]
The precedent was repudiated nine years later in Afroyim v. Rusk,[2] in which the Supreme Court held that the Fourteenth Amendment's Citizenship Clause guaranteed citizens' right to keep their citizenship and overturned the same law that it had upheld in Perez.