Volume 7 Number 2 (February 1997), pp. 72-75. STRANGERS TO THE CONSTITUTION: IMMIGRANTS, BORDERS, AND FUNDAMENTAL LAW by Gerald L. Neuman; (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996). Reviewed by John Blakeman, Department of Political Science, Baylor University
Gerald Neuman addresses one topic now dominating our current political discourse in Strangers to the Constitution, namely, the debate over immigration. Both the federal and state governments have responded to an influx of aliens into the United States that is often perceived as harmful to our systems of social welfare, health care, public education, among other things. Based on the circumstances, it is easy to argue that current immigration law should be critically reassessed. For Professor Neuman, our system of immigration laws needs to be reassessed due to problems that inhere in our constitutional system. That is, often the Constitution itself is unclear concerning the rights and responsibilities of aliens. Moreover, interpretations of the Constitution since 1787 on issues of alienage have not helped either, and have only served to make more difficult current debate on the role of aliens and immigrants under the Constitution. Neuman offers an historical and, as he terms it, argumentative analysis of "the constitutional foundations of immigration law and alien's rights in the United States. Immigration law has long been treated as outside the constitutional mainstream." As he puts it, immigrants present special problems for our constitutional system. Judges (and others) in the United States have historically been hesitant to extend constitutional rights and liberties to individuals crossing into the sovereign territory of the United States from foreign nations or international territory. Neuman's goal is to "find persuasive contemporary answers within the framework of U.S. constitutional practice" to questions as to why constitutional protections should be extended to aliens. | |
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