Your Right to Travel Freely

Right to travel. Cf. Commerce; Consumer goods; Conveyance; Free and innocent passage; Locomotion; Motor vehicle; Terry stops; Traffic;

Magna Carta, Article 42: 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 who shall be treated as it is said above. http://www.magnacharta.com/

Northwest Ordinance of 1787, 13th day of July, in the year of our Lord 1787, and of their sovereignty and independence the twelfth) Sec 14. Art 4. (The navigable waters leading into the Mississippi and St. Lawrence, and the carrying places between the same, shall be common highways and forever free, as well to the inhabitants of the said territory as to the citizens of the United States, and those of any other States that may be admitted into the confederacy, without any tax, impost, or duty therefor.); http://www.ourdocuments.gov/print_friendly.php?flash=true&page=transcript&doc=8&title=Transcript+of+Northwest+Ordinance+%281787%29

1. Schactman v. Dulles, 96 U.S. App. D.C. 287, 225 F2d 938, 941 (1955) (The right to travel is a well-established common right that does not owe its existence to the federal government. It is recognized by the courts as a natural right.); http://www.lawfulpath.com/ref/right2travel.shtml

2. Aptheker v. Secretary of State, 378 U.S. 500, 520, 84 S.Ct. 1659, 12 L.Ed.2d 992 (1964) (Freedom of movement is kin to the right of assembly, and to the right of association. These rights may not be abridged, De Jonge v. Oregon, 299 U.S. 353; NAACP v. Alabama, 357 U.S. 449, 357 U.S. 460-462, only illegal conduct being within the purview of crime in the constitutional sense.); http://laws.findlaw.com/us/378/500.html

3. U.S. v. Guest, 383 U.S. 745, 757-758, 86 S.Ct. 1170 (1966) (The constitutional right to travel from one State to another, and necessarily to use the highways and other instrumentalities of interstate commerce in doing so, occupies a position fundamental to the concept of our Federal Union. It is a right that has been firmly established and repeatedly recognized. In Crandall v. Nevada, 6 Wall. 35, invalidating [383 U.S. 745, 758] a Nevada tax on every person leaving the State by common carrier, the Court took as its guide the statement of Chief Justice Taney in the Passenger Cases, 7 How. 283, 492: "For all the great purposes for which the Federal government was formed, we are one people, with one common country. We are all citizens of the United States; and, as members of the same community, must have the right to pass and repass through every part of it without interruption, as freely as in our own States." See 6 Wall., at 48-49.); http://laws.findlaw.com/us/383/745.html

4. U.S. v. Laub, 385 U.S. 475, 87 S.Ct. 574, 17 L.Ed.2d 526 (1967) (As this Court has observed, "The right to travel is a part of the ‘liberty’ of which the citizen cannot be deprived without due process of law...."); http://laws.findlaw.com/us/385/475.html

5. Shapiro v. Thompson, 394 U.S. 618, 627 n. 6 (1969) (This Court long ago recognized that the nature of our Federal Union and our constitutional concepts of personal liberty unite to require that all citizens be free to travel throughout the length and breadth of our land uninhibited by statutes, rules, or regulations which unreasonably burden or restrict this movement. That [394 U.S. 618, 630] proposition was early stated by Chief Justice Taney in the Passenger Cases, 7 How. 283, 492 (1849): "For all the great purposes for which the Federal government was formed, we are one people, with one common country. We are all citizens of the United States; and, as members of the same community, must have the right to pass and repass through every part of it without interruption, as freely as in our own States." We have no occasion to ascribe the source of this right to travel interstate to a particular constitutional provision.(8) It suffices that, as MR. JUSTICE STEWART said for the Court in United States v. Guest, 383 U.S. 745, 757-758 (1966): "The constitutional right to travel from one State to another . . . occupies a position fundamental to the concept of our Federal Union. It is a right that has been firmly established and repeatedly recognized. ". . . [T]he right finds no explicit mention in the Constitution. The reason, it has been suggested, is [394 U.S. 618, 631] that a right so elementary was conceived from the beginning to be a necessary concomitant of the stronger Union the Constitution created. In any event, freedom to travel throughout the United States has long been recognized as a basic right under the Constitution."); http://laws.findlaw.com/us/394/618.htm

7. Dunn v. Blumstein, 405 U.S. 330, 338-342 (1972) ("[F]reedom to travel throughout the United States has long been recognized as a basic right under the Constitution." United States v. Guest, 383 U.S. 745, 758 (1966). See Passenger Cases, 7 How. 283, 492 (1849) (Taney, C. J.); Crandall v. Nevada, 6 Wall. 35, 43-44 (1868); Paul v. Virginia, 8 Wall. 168, 180 (1869); Edwards v. California, 314 U.S. 160 (1941); Kent v. Dulles, 357 U.S. 116, 126 (1958); Shapiro v. Thompson, 394 U.S. 618, 629-631, 634 (1969); Oregon v. Mitchell, 400 U.S., at 237 (separate opinion of BRENNAN, WHITE, and MARSHALL, JJ.), 285-286 (STEWART, J., concurring and dissenting, with whom BURGER, C. J., and BLACKMUN, J., joined).); http://laws.findlaw.com/us/405/330.html

Know your rights. Some day you may be told you are on lockdown because it’s just too sunny outside or maybe there’s too much traffic on the street.