A Constitutional Right to Travel to Cuba

[Judi Lynn]

A Constitutional Right to Travel to Cuba

By Tom Crumpacker*

Our government has been telling us that the reason it is prohibiting us from traveling to Cuba is to deny Cubans hard currency so that they will change the way they have organized their society. If so, it's the first time in our history we've been forced to give up one of our fundamental liberties in order to implement a foreign policy objective.

The right of travel to nations at peace with us was so clear and obvious that our government didn't try to restrict it until the time of the Cold War, when both socialist and capitalist governments began preventing their citizens from learning what things were like on the other side of the Iron Curtain. However, efforts to prevent our travel to socialist countries including Cuba were declared unconstitutional by our Supreme Court. Concurring in Aptheker v. State, 378 US 500 (1964), Justice Douglas stated as regards the First Amendment (citations omitted):

"It shall be lawful to any person, for the future, to go out of our kingdom, and to return, safely and securely, by land or by water, saving his allegiance to us, unless it be in time of war, for some short space, for the common good of the kingdom: excepting prisoners and outlaws, according to the laws of the land, and of the people of the nation at war against us, and merchants also shall be treated as said above."
(snip)

"Free movement by the citizen is of course as dangerous to a tyrant as free expression of ideas or the right of assembly and it is therefore controlled in most countries in the interests of security....Freedom of movement, at home and abroad, is important for job and business opportunities -- for cultural, political, and social activities -- for all the commingling which gregarious man enjoys. Those with the right of free movement use it at times for mischievous purposes. But that is true of many liberties we enjoy. We nevertheless place our faith in them, and against restraint, knowing that the risk of abusing liberty so as to give rise to punishable conduct is part of the price we pay for this free society. Freedom of movement is kin to the right of assembly and to the right of association. War may be the occasion for serious curtailment of liberty. Absent war, I see no way to keep a citizen from traveling within or without the country, unless there is power to detain him.This freedom of movement is the very essence of our free society, setting us apart. Like the right of assembly and the right of association, it often makes all other rights meaningful."
(snip/...)

http://www.alcaabajo.cu/sitio/stop_ftaa/iv_reich/a_constitutional_right_180105.htm

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