While the abstract equality of citizens before the law is imagined as protection from arbitrary, subjective legal judgments of an individual's character, I argue that judgments of character play a pivotal yet unexamined role regulating access to citizenship in American law. Through a comparative analysis of President Trump and President Theodore Roosevelt, I show how their seemingly personal obsession with libel law reveals a deeper interest in consolidating the state's power as sole arbiter of character in order to weaponize the “good moral character” requirement in immigration and naturalization law as an instrument of racial and ethnic exclusion.

中文翻译：

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恢复国家的诽谤权力：罗斯福和特朗普时代的人格法律生活

虽然公民在法律面前的抽象平等被想象为对个人性格的任意、主观的法律判断的保护，但我认为性格判断在美国法律中发挥着调节公民身份的关键但未经检验的作用。通过对特朗普总统和西奥多·罗斯福总统的比较分析，我展示了他们看似个人对诽谤法的痴迷如何揭示出他们对巩固国家权力作为唯一的品格仲裁者的更深兴趣，以便将移民和移民中的“良好道德品格”要求武器化。入籍法作为种族和族裔排斥的工具。