Citizenship revocation and the privilege to have rights
Professor Audrey Macklin (University of Toronto)
Public Seminar Series
Wednesday, 03 December 2014, 5pm to 6.30pm
Seminar Room 1, Oxford Department of International Development, 3 Mansfield Road, OX1 3TB
Hosted by Refugee Studies Centre
A podcast of this seminar is now available.
Citizenship revocation has emerged in the UK and Canada as a supplement to the counter-terrorism toolkit, and is on the legislative agenda elsewhere. Citizens who engage in conduct deemed threatening to national security face potential deprivation of citizenship through the exercise of executive discretion. The author situates citizenship revocation within the evolving field of 'crimmigration', as well as in its historical context. The new 'two-step exile' extends the functionality of immigration law by turning citizens into deportable aliens: first, strip citizenship; second, deport the newly minted alien. This revival of banishment raises various normative, legal and practical considerations. Professor Macklin will critically engage with the depiction of citizenship as a privilege versus a right, and citizenship revocation for misconduct as constructive breach of the social contract versus punishment. She will argue that citizenship revocation as conceived under both the UK and Canadian regimes is essentially punitive. She will then analyse the legality of citizenship revocation under international law and the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, using US Supreme Court judgements on expatriation as a relevant source of comparative jurisprudence.
about the speaker
Audrey Macklin is Professor and Chair in Human Rights Law at the University of Toronto. She holds law degrees from Yale and Toronto, and a bachelor of science degree from Alberta. After graduating from Toronto, she served as law clerk to Mme Justice Bertha Wilson at the Supreme Court of Canada. She was appointed to the faculty of Dalhousie Law School in 1991, promoted to Associate Professor 1998, moved to the University of Toronto in 2000, and became a full professor in 2009. While teaching at Dalhousie, she also served as a member of the Immigration and Refugee Board.
Professor Macklin’s teaching areas include criminal law, administrative law, and immigration and refugee law. Her research and writing interests include transnational migration, citizenship, forced migration, feminist and cultural analysis, and human rights. She has published on these subjects in journals such as Refuge and Canadian Woman Studies, and in collections of essays such as The Security of Freedom: Essays on Canada's Anti-Terrorism Bill and Engendering Forced Migration.
Prof. Macklin has been active in the Omar Khadr case. See the Omar Khadr case resources page.
Light refreshments will be served after the event.
