Op-Ed Contributor

Are American Samoans American?

Credit...Anthony Russo













The United States presumably has less interest in denying citizenship to American Samoans than in defending the validity of the underlying legal regime that was constructed to allow the United States to project power in its territories and abroad with fewer constitutional constraints.

Whatever the answer to the question raised in Tuaua is, it is long overdue. To be subjected to uncertainty with respect to something as fundamental as one’s citizenship is in and of itself a severe harm. Even in the other territories, where statutory birthright citizenship has provided a makeshift solution for many decades, doubt, confusion and anxiety over the extent to which citizenship is constitutionally guaranteed have persisted for more than a century.

The 14th Amendment is supposed to protect people not only from arbitrary and unjust denials of their citizenship, but from uncertainty about whether they are citizens at all. Both the insult of second-class status and the injury of uncertainty are the ugly legal legacies of 19th century American expansionism. The court should hear the Tuaua appeal and clarify the scope of the Citizenship Clause once and for all.