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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.

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