Citizenship, Passports, and the Legal Identity of Americans: Edward Snowden and Others Have a Case in the Courts

In this Essay, Professor Patrick Weil reexamines the constitutional function of the passport in relation to American citizenship. The State Department recently developed a policy of passport revocation whereby some Americans are transformed into de facto stateless persons, like Edward Snowden, or are prohibited from living abroad as citizens, like dozens of Yemeni Americans. In the Yemeni Americans' case, the State Department confuses the legality of passports and naturalization. Revoking Snowden's passport violates the right for a citizen to possess a passport confirming his or her legal identity-including citizenship-while abroad. This passport function, recognized since 1835, is one of the privileges and immunities of American citizens protected by the Fourteenth Amendment. The Supreme Court has never authorized its suspension by the executive for national security reasons, unlike the other function of a passportthe right to travel. New technologies offer a way to distinguish between these two functions and to make effective a constitutional right