Gabriel Jackson Chin (University of California, Davis – School of Law), Nicholas Starkman (UC Davis School of Law), & Steven Vong (UC Davis School of Law) have posted Chevron and Citizenship (UC Davis Law Review, Vol. 52, No. 1, 145) on SSRN. Here is the abstract:
This paper argues that courts should not defer to federal administrative agencies when interpreting laws granting citizenship. First, the Supreme Court has held that fundamental questions of policy and economics presumptively are not delegated to agencies. Citizenship and nationality are fundamental policy matters — the Court has stated of the United States that “[i]ts citizenry is the country and the country is its citizenry.” It is not plausibly imaginable that Congress delegated the question of what our country should be to administrators. Second, a long line of Supreme Court cases, apparently ratified by Congress, apply the immigration rule of lenity to citizenship cases. In addition, administrators have advanced discriminatory interpretations of the law. These factors, taken together, create grave doubt about the Chevron doctrine’s application to citizenship claims. Instead, ordinary judicial review should apply.