NEWS RELEASE
February 27, 1981 WORLD CITIZEN TRIAL IN US COURT OF APPEALS MARCH 11
Washington, D.C. - On March 11, 1981 at 9:30 a.m., David Carliner, Washington
immigration attorney, will argue the case of World Citizen Garry Davis before the U.S.
Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia.
Davis has been excluded from legal entry into the United States, the country of his
birth, by both the Immigration and Naturalization Service and the U.S. District Court
which characterized him an "excludable alien," though U.S. Government attorneys
admit he is physically undeportable.
He attempted to enter the United States on May 17, 1977 on a passport issued by the
World Service Authority, the administrative agency of the embryonic World Government,
Davis declare on September 4, 1953 from the city hall of Ellsworth, Maine.
The former World War II pilot, Broadway actor and son of society orchestra leader Meyer
Davis, renounced his U.S. nationality in 1948 in Paris and declared himself a world
citizen. A worldwide movement of self-declared "world citizens" resulted,
sparked by Davis and friends during the 1948 General Assembly of the United Nations in
Paris, aided by the chaos and frustrations of the WW II aftermath and the U.N.'s impotence
to deal with world problems.
Judge Thomas Flannery, U.S. District Court, in denying Davis' petition for a writ of
habeus corpus which, if granted, would in effect bring him legally into the U.S., wrote in
a Memorandum Opinion that "This opinion fails to prevent the petitioner or any other
person from continuing to work for world peace through the vehicle of world citizenship
and world government.
"The 9th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution," Davis stated,
"specifically claims that rights not enumerated in the Constitution are retained by
the people. The right to make world peace by law and its institutions is therefore a
peoples' or human right just as the right to found the United States - thereby making
peace between the then separate and sovereign states - was a human rights. As the outgoing
U.S. president said, 'America did not invent human rights. Human rights invented America.'
"This is the real meaning of my present case with the U.S. judiciary. The specific
issue aside - whether I am or not still a U.S. citizen - should we lose in the Court of
Appeals, we will appeal to the Supreme Court. Should the Supreme Court decline to hear the
case, then I will remain, according to U.S. law, an 'excludable alien.' At this point,
national due process will break down since the national law to 'exclude' me will prove
unenforceable. My status as a world citizen will then prevail, recognized tacitly by the
U.S. Government."
Davis added that" should the Supreme Court agree to hear the case and subsequently
decide in our favor, that is, that my original renunciation of U.S. nationality is
unconstitutional, then I will be both a U.S. and a World Government citizen as indeed are
many of the present citizens of our global government. This is true peace-making and
analogous to the national citizens equally allied to state or local government."
Carliner claims in his brief to the Appeal Court that Davis' original renunciation of
U.S. nationality wherein Davis spelled out his arguments for a world government, did not
expatriate him as a U.S. citizen since he had no other nationality nor did he seek one
subsequently and thus he would be rendered stateless. Carliner stated that "the
provision in the Nationality Act under which Davis was held to have lost his U.S.
citizenship was intended to eliminate dual nationality, not to make a person devoid of
citizenship in any nation.
During the recent presidential campaign, Davis wrote to the major candidates seeking
their endorsement as a "candidate for world parliament."
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