Ayelet Shachar -Citizenship
Citizenship Matters
As Rogers Smith observes, “the oldest, most basic, and most prevalent
meaning[of citizenship] is a certain sort of membership in a political
community”.
Although the scale and scope of the political community has ranged from city-
state to empire, citizenship has always been associated(at least since Aristotle)
with political relations.
From the Athenians we draw the tradition of associating citizenship with
collective self-governance.
From the Roman tradition we carry forward the idea of citizens as possessing a
formal legal status with certain associated privileges and responsibilities.
All free and democratic states at all times have established a unique status of
this kind and all such states have always accorded some special rights and
privileges to their citizens.
Most courts and commentators agree that “Citizenship has entailed membership,
membership of the community in which one lives one's life”.
Already under Roman jurisprudence, ‘“citizen” came to mean someone free to
act by law, free to ask and ex pect the law's protection’.
From the French Revolution onward, the modern state began to administer and
assign citizenship, which has since come to signify equality of rights and duties
among members of the same political community.
By labeling certain individuals as members, citizenship offers, however, more
than just a juridical, legal status and the promise of equality before the law.
It also opens up a host of rights, opportunities, and privileges for those who
count as full members.
