UC Berkeley

This study examines the evolution of the concept of citizenship under the United States Constitution. It traces how a concept of citizenship that was once centered on individual states (state citizenship) developed into a concept centered on a single, overarching status that is meaningful across the United States (federal citizenship). The author defines citizenship as a constitutional status, which is accompanied by certain rights that are unique to the status, and backed up by the power of the government to protect those rights on behalf of people who possess the status. For citizenship to be meaningful, the government needs to possess authority over all three aspects of citizenship.

The study focuses on a series of interstate conflicts from the mid-nineteenth to mid-twentieth century over the status of persons, especially blacks, immigrants, and paupers. This resulted in a progressive expansion of the scope of federal citizenship at the expense of state citizenship. The Fourteenth Amendment was a turning point in the relationship between state citizenship and federal citizenship. It was meant to extend the scope of all aspects of federal citizenship, so that the status of federal citizenship was to be granted to a broader population, that important rights were to be attached to federal citizenship, and that the federal government was to have a broad power to protect the rights of federal citizens. In practice, however, this change was not immediate and clear-cut. Diverse groups (blacks, immigrants, and paupers) that had been excluded from state citizenship only gradually came to be included and protected under the umbrella of federal citizenship. This study shows the struggles over this transfer of authority from the state governments to the federal government.

The study utilizes primary sources from all three branches of the government, both at the federal and state level (especially states that were involved in interstate controversies) as well as secondary sources to examine the conflicts over citizenship that led to changes in their scope and the location of authority. The author concludes that contemporary conflicts involving state discrimination against nonresidents should be assessed in light of the broader historical trend towards a more inclusive, nationalized notion of citizenship instead of an exclusionary, localized citizenship based in the states.