entry
Definitions from Case Law · United States Supreme Court
Definitions from Case Law
From 345 U.S. 206 - Shaughnessy v. United States Ex Rel. Mezei · 1953Most cited · 1,853 citing opinions
immigration law
harborage at Ellis Island is not an entry into the United States. For purposes of the immigration laws, moreover, the legal incidents of an alien's entry remain unaltered whether he has been here once before or not. He is an entering alien just the same, and may be excluded if unqualified for admission under existing immigration laws.
How the Supreme Court has restated “entry”
Each Supreme Court definition of “entry,” sized by how often later courts cited it. “Change” is measured by wording overlap with earlier definitions — a rough signal, not a semantic judgment.
How often courts cite the cases defining “entry”
Court decisions citing the 8 opinions that defined “entry” — 2,898 in all, by decade. Counts are citations to the defining cases as a whole, not verified uses of the term. The dip in the most recent years is a data-coverage gap, not a real trend — our corpus holds fewer opinions from the latest years.
All 8 definitions, chronological · 1826–1953
- ORIGINAL
an entry, to satisfy the law, must describe the place with sufficient accuracy to be found and known by others, and in terms which will not fit other places equally well with that intended to be appropriated.
must be specific and not misleading
The term entry, as applied to appropriations of land, was probably borrowed from the State of Virginia, in which we find it used in that sense at a very remote period. Many cases will be found in the reports of the decisions of this Court, in which the title to western lands were drawn in question, which will show how familiarly and generally the term is used by Court and bar. Its sense, in the legal nomenclature of this country, is now as fixed and definite as that of many terms borrowed from the common law. It means that act by which an individual acquires an inceptive right to a portion of the unappropriated soil of the country, by filing his claim in the office of an officer known in the legislation of several States by the epithet of an entry-taker, and corresponding very much in his functions with the registers of land offices, under the acts of the United States.
That there is less precision and certainty in this description than if the heirs were named, must be admitted, but the Court is not prepared to say that the entry is on that account a nullity... The entry is an incipient step towards obtaining a title. Its object is at the same time to appropriate the land it covers, and to give notice to others that the land is appropriated.
validity, made in name of 'heirs'
while she was at Ellis Island she was to be regarded as stopped at the boundary line and kept there unless and until her right to enter should be declared. When her prison bounds were enlarged by committing her to the custody of the Hebrew Society, the nature of her stay within the territory was not changed. She was still in theory of law at the boundary line and had gained no foothold in the United States.
immigration
The word 'entry' by its own force implies a coming from outside. The context shows that in order that there be an entry within the meaning of the act there must be an arrival from some foreign port or place. There is no such entry where one goes to sea on board an American vessel from a port of the United States and returns to the same or another port of this country without having been in any foreign port or place.
The relator's arrival in the United States in April, 1929, was an entry into this country notwithstanding he was a member of the crew of an American ship which had made a round trip voyage. He came from a place outside the United States, and from a foreign port or place, within the meaning of the immigration laws.
immigration law
includes any coming of an alien from a foreign country into the United States whether such coming be the first or any subsequent one