Citizens of Each State

Citizens of Each State

A question much mooted before the Civil War was whether the term could be held to include free Negroes. In the Dred Scott case,171 the Court answered it in the negative. “Citizens of each State,” Chief Justice Taney argued, meant citizens of the United States as understood at the time the Constitution was adopted, and Negroes were not then regarded as capable of citizenship. The only category of national citizenship added under the Constitution comprised aliens, naturalized in accordance with acts of Congress.172 In dissent, Justice Curtis not only denied the Chief Justice’s assertion that there were no Negro citizens of states in 1789 but further argued that, although Congress alone could determine what classes of aliens should be naturalized, the states retained the right to extend citizenship to classes of persons born within their borders who had not previously enjoyed citizenship and that one upon whom state citizenship was thus conferred became a citizen of the state in the full sense of the Constitution.173 So far as persons born in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof are concerned, the question was put at rest by the Fourteenth Amendment.

Citizens of Each State and the U.S. Constitution

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This text about Citizens of Each State is based on “The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation”, published by the U.S. Government Printing Office.

Notes

[Footnote 1] Scott v. Sandford, 60 U.S. (19 How.) 393 (1857).

[Footnote 2] 60 U.S. at 403-11.

[Footnote 3] 60 U.S. at 572-90.