Freedom of Movement
![handle is hein.journals/ilr41 and id is 24 raw text is: FREEDOM OF MOVEMENT
Allan D. Vestal*
The most conspicuous characteristic of present Western soci-
eties is indeed their great mobility .... [w]e live in a mobile
age, in an age of shifting and change.1
Geographic mobility has always been a habit of the American
people.2
Great segments of the story of America have been written in terms of
the migrations of people. From the initial settlement of the colonies,
through the westward movements from the original states, the period of
settlement of the Ohio River Valley, the push into the Louisiana terri-
tory and finally the gold rush to California-which has been called the
greatest mass movement of people since the Crusades-America until
1850 was almost totally a story of moving people.3 But America's popu-
lation did not become static in the middle of the nineteenth century.
Rather Americans continued to move so that every census from that of
1850 has shown that more than one-fifth of the Native Americans have
migrated from the States of their birth and were living in other states.4
And even this does not reflect the total migration since it reports only
*Associate Professor of Law, State University of Iowa. The author acknowledges
with gratitude the assistance rendered by Mr. W. J. Shoemaker, Editor-in-Chief
of the Iowa Law Review.
'SoRoxIN, SoorAL MOBII-TY 490 (1927). On the international level, it has been
commented, We are the most open society that the world has ever seen. We have
adopted our liberal practice despite the doctrine of international law that there is
no limitation upon the sovereign state's power to restrict travel. Wyzanshi, Freedom
to Travel, Atlantic Monthly, Oct. 1952, p. 66.
2ANALYsIS or MATERIAL BEARING ox THE ECONOmIc AND SOCrAL AsPECTS OF THE
CASE OF EDWARDS V. CALEFORNIA (PRINTED FOR THE USE OF THE SELECT COMMITTEE
INVESTIGATING NATIONAL DarExsz MIGRATION) 2 (1941) (hereinafter referred to as
ANALYSIS or MATERIAL).
It should be noted that mobility is a general characteristic of western civilization
and is not restricted to the United States. In other parts of the -world, for example,
India, people are very disinclined to leave their own social group. Even of those that
do move, it has been found that the great majority located only a very short distance
from their original home and were not emigrants in the ordinary sense of the term.
See SoRDnox, op. cit. supra note 1, at 382, 383.
3GUNTHEn, INSIDE U.S.A. 10 (1947). Americans who think of the California gold
rush as the great surge in American movement can write it down as a fragment in
proportion to the 1940-44 dispersal of civilians .... Whether the force be unemploy-
ment or homesickness or merely the acquired habit of movement, the 'hordes' of
Americans can be expected almost anywhere there is a job, chance, or even a road.
. J. Daniels, Moving Day in America, 27 SAT. REv. OF LrT. 15 (1944).
4ANALYSIS Or MATERIAL Op. cit. supra note 2, at 3. Thus, in 1930 about 25,-
000,000 native Americans were living outside the states of their birth.
1(... in contemporary Western societies its members become less and less at-
tached to the place where they are born; a greater and greater number of individuals
6](ViewImageLocal?handle=hein.journals/ilr41&div=8&collection=&method=preview&ext=.png&size=3)
What Is HeinOnline?
Contact us for annual subscription options:
Already a HeinOnline Subscriber?
profiles profiles most
Freedom of Movement
Contact us for annual subscription options:
Already a HeinOnline Subscriber?
profiles profiles most