‘A person may be a citizen of the United States, and not a citizen of any particular state. This is the condition of citizens residing in the
District of Columbia, and in the territories of the United States, or who have taken up a residence abroad, and others that might be mentioned. A fixed and permanent residence or domicile in a state is essential to the character of citizenship that will bring the case within the jurisdiction of the federal courts.‘
As has been said, citizens of the District of Columbia were not granted the
privilege of litigating in the federal courts on the ground of diversity of citizenship. Possibly no better reason for this fact exists than that such citizens were not thought of when the judiciary article of the federal Constitution was drafted. It is even more *915 probable that citizens of the United States, occupying the very unusual status that Pannill does, were also not thought of; but in any event a citizen of the United States, who is not a citizen of any state, is not within the
language of the Constitution. And to my mind Pannill is not a citizen of California, simply because he never intends to return to that state, and has finally severed his connection with that state.
The theoretical domicile which is equivalent to state citizenship is always one which exists animo revertendi. The theoretical domicile which clings to a homeless wanderer, who never intends to return, has its uses in deciding rights of succession to property, in respect to taxation and to
the administration of pauper laws, but is not, I think, equivalent to citizenship in the sense in which the word ‘citizen‘ is used in the Judiciary Act. While domicile, in some sense, may not be lost by mere departure with intent not to return, state citizenship is thus lost. In other words, where the word ‘domicile‘ is used as meaning home, where absence from domicile is animo revertendi, domicile may be equivalent to state citizenship; but where domicile exists merely by legal fiction, and
absence is accompanied by intent never to return to the state of domicile, the word is not synonymous with citizenship.
PANNILL V. ROANOKE TIMES CO. D.C.VA. 1918.
