ABSTRACT
The right to travel is the right to move into, out of, among, and within states, foreign nations, and lesser political and geographic entities. The right to travel has been long recognized in Anglo-American law; it is referred to explicitly in England's Magna Carta and the Articles of Confederation, the document that governed the United States prior to the Constitution. For much of US history, issues surrounding the right to travel were linked to the enslavement of African Americans. Before the Civil War, slave owners claimed the right to travel with their slaves to states and territories where slavery was prohibited but to retain full property rights to their slaves. In the twentieth century the Supreme Court interpreted the right to travel to apply to important questions of whether newly arrived state citizens could vote and receive welfare and other benefits, without first being residents of states for a specified period of time.
