"The United States Code is the official codification of the general and permanent laws of the United States of America. The Code was first published in 1926, and a new edition of the code has been published every six years since 1934. The 2012 edition of the Code incorporates laws enacted through the One Hundred Twelfth Congress, Second Session, the last of which was signed by the President on January 15, 2013. It does not include laws of the One Hundred Thirteenth Congress, First Session, enacted between January 2, 2013, the date it convened, and January 15, 2013. By statutory authority this edition may be cited "U.S.C. 2012 ed." As adopted in 1926, the Code established prima facie the general and permanent laws of the United States. The underlying statutes reprinted in the Code remained in effect and controlled over the Code in case of any discrepancy. In 1947, Congress began enacting individual titles of the Code into positive law. When a title is enacted into positive law, the underlying statutes are repealed and the title then becomes legal evidence of the law. Currently, 26 of the 51 titles in the Code have been so enacted. These are identified in the table of titles near the beginning of each volume. The Law Revision Counsel of the House of Representatives continues to prepare legislation pursuant to 2 U.S.C. 285b to enact the remainder of the Code, on a title-by-title basis, into positive law. The 2012 edition of the Code was prepared and published under the supervision of Ralph V. Seep, Law Revision Counsel. Grateful acknowledgment is made of the contributions by all who helped in this work, particularly the staffs of the Office of the Law Revision Counsel and the Government Printing Office"--Preface.

Few African countries provide for an explicit right to a nationality. Laws and practices governing citizenship leave hundreds of thousands of people in Africa without a country to which they belong. Statelessness and discriminatory citizenship practices underlie and exacerbate tensions in many regions of the continent, according to this report by the Open Society Institute. Citizenship Law in Africa is a comparative study by the Open Society Justice Initiative and Africa Governance Monitoring and Advocacy Project. It describes the often arbitrary, discriminatory, and contradictory citizenship laws that exist from state to state, and recommends ways that African countries can bring their citizenship laws in line with international legal norms. The report covers topics such as citizenship by descent, citizenship by naturalization, gender discrimination in citizenship law, dual citizenship, and the right to identity documents and passports. It describes how stateless Africans are systematically exposed to human rights abuses: they can neither vote nor stand for public office; they cannot enroll their children in school, travel freely, or own property; they cannot work for the government.--Publisher description.

Citizenship Laws of the World is the newest addition to AILAs line of reprinted government publications. Produced by the Office of Personnel Management, it provides citizenship regulations for most countries of the world.This directory is intended to be a quick-reference guide that gives a summary of citizenship regulations for each country. Inside youll find information on: --who is considered a citizen --dual citizenship --loss of citizenship --country restrictions

This book identifies the rights of stateless people and outlines the major legal obstacles preventing the eradication of statelessness.

At a time of rising populism and debate about immigration, leading legal academic Jo Shaw sets out to review interactions between constitutions and constructs of citizenship. This incisive appraisal is the first sustained treatment of the relationship between citizenship and constitutional law in a comparative and transnational perspective. Drawing on examples from around the world, it assesses how countries’ legal, political and cultural processes help to determine the boundaries of citizenship. For students and academics across political, social and international disciplines, Shaw offers an accessible response to some of the most pressing international questions of our age.

This paper analyzes the impact of citizenship laws on economic development. We first document the evolution of citizenship laws around the world, highlighting the main features of jus soli, jus sanguinis as well as mixed regimes, and shedding light on the channels through which they could have differentiated impact on economic development. We then compile a data set of citizenship laws around the world. Using cross-country regressions, panel-data techniques, as well as the synthetic control method and subjecting the results to a battery of tests, we find robust evidence that jus soli laws—being more inclusive—lead to higher income levels than alternative citizenship rules in developing countries, though to a less extent in countries with stronger institutional environment.

American identity has always been capacious as a concept but narrow in its application. Citizenship has mostly been about being here, either through birth or residence. The territorial premises for citizenship have worked to resolve the peculiar challenges of American identity. But globalization is detaching identity from location. What used to define American was rooted in American space. Now one can be anywhere and be an American, politically or culturally. Against that backdrop, it becomes difficult to draw the boundaries of human community in a meaningful way. Longstanding notions of democratic citizenship are becoming obsolete, even as we cling to them. Beyond Citizenship charts the trajectory of American citizenship and shows how American identity is unsustainable in the face of globalization. Peter J. Spiro describes how citizenship law once reflected and shaped the American national character. Spiro explores the histories of birthright citizenship, naturalization, dual citizenship, and how those legal regimes helped reinforce an otherwise fragile national identity. But on a shifting global landscape, citizenship status has become increasingly divorced from any sense of actual community on the ground. As the bonds of citizenship dissipate, membership in the nation-state becomes less meaningful. The rights and obligations distinctive to citizenship are now trivial. Naturalization requirements have been relaxed, dual citizenship embraced, and territorial birthright citizenship entrenched--developments that are all irreversible. Loyalties, meanwhile, are moving to transnational communities defined in many different ways: by race, ethnicity, gender, religion, age, and sexual orientation. These communities, Spiro boldly argues, are replacing bonds that once connected people to the nation-state, with profound implications for the future of governance. Learned, incisive, and sweeping in scope, Beyond Citizenship offers a provocative look at how globalization is changing the very definition of who we are and where we belong.