Revoking Citizenship

An original fascinating and insightful interpretation of a neglected dimension of American political culture: the power to revoke citizenship. Herzogs book is an important exploration of the deeper meaning of political and national culture as it affects and is affected by legal arrangements. ~Pnina Lahav,Boston University

In this pioneering study, Ben Herzog shows that in order to understand the continually-contested status of citizenship, we must understand how citizenship is lost. Challenging the popular notion that only totalitarian regimes take away citizenship, his book throws much needed light on the long history of revocation in the United States, the postwar judicial revolution that minimized the practice, and new challenges in the twenty-first century to that revolutions achievements. By deftly placing contemporary controversies about terrorism and the right to have rights into this broader historical and social context, Revoking Citizenship provides a timely yet sure to be lasting contribution to scholarship. For anyone concerned with the problems of citizenship, it is essential reading. ~Chad Alan Goldberg,University of Wisconsin-Madison

Scholarship on citizenship has awakened to the potential power that lies in laws of expatriation. Ben Herzogs political, philosophical, and jurisprudential history of expatriation practices reaches back further in U.S. history than other such studies and sheds much needed light on the contemporary relevance of this important facet of U.S. citizenship. ~Elizabeth F. Cohen,Syracuse University

ThatRevoking Citizenshipnot only provokesquestions but also simultaneously provides the groundwork necessary for further inquiry into these issues illustrates why the book is likely to become a staple in the canon of historical and legal scholarship on citizenship. ~The Journal of American History

For Herzog, expatriation policy and practices are windows to American understanding of citizenship. ~Choice