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16 Immigr. & Nat'lity L. Rev. 83 (1994-1995)
Justifying U.S. Naturalization Policies

handle is hein.journals/inlr16 and id is 91 raw text is: CITIZENSHIP PANEL PRINCIPAL PAPER Justifying U.S. Naturalization Policies GERALD L. NEUMAN* Commissioner Meissner has emphasized for us the importance of naturalization and the need to put the N back into INS.' The present Article aims toward an analogous goal: putting the n back into immigration law scholarship.2 It will not treat the requirements for naturalization as straight-forward, which in an academic context could mean undeserving of serious attention. Instead, it will inquire into their justifiability. By justifiability, I mean political justifiability, measured against the political principles applied in other legal contexts in the United States. Occasional discussions of the constitutionality of naturali- zation criteria dwell on the question whether congressional power over naturalization is plenary in the sense of being subject to no constitutional constraints, subject only to a rationality requirement, * Professor of Law, Columbia University School of Law. I wish to express my thanks to Professors C. Edwin Baker, Kay Hailbronner, Louis Henkin, Stephen Legomsky, David Martin, Michael Olivas, and Peter Schuck, and especially to Professors Jochen Abraham Frowein and Roldiger Wolfrum, whose hospitality at the Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law enabled me to write this Article. 1. Doris Meissner, Putting the N Back Into INS: Comments on the Immigration and Naturalization Service, 35 Va. J. Int'l L. 1, 3 (1994). 2. The reader will have noticed that the only comes at the end of Immigration, but so does naturalization. ©1994 by Virginia Journal of International Law. Reprinted with permission.