Whether 8 U.S.C. § 1451(a)'s requirement that the United States Attorney for the respective district institute proceedings is a jurisdictional requirement?

QUESTION PRESENTED The question presented for review here is: 1. Whether 8 U.S.C. § 1451(a)’s requirement that the United States Attorney for the respective district institute proceedings is a jurisdictional requirement? The Constitution provides that “The Congress shall have power ... to establish a uniform rule of naturalization ... throughout the United States.” Article I, § 8, cl. 4. Accordingly, “Congress alone has the constitutional authority to prescribe rules for naturalization,” Fedorenko v. United States, 449 U.S. 490, 506 (1981) (quoting United States v. Ginsberg, 243 US. 472, 474 (1917)). Exercising this power, “Congress has provided a special judicial procedure which must be followed, if a citizen is denaturalized. That procedure is contained in [8 U.S.C. § 1451]. It provides for canceling a certificate of naturalization on the ground that it was procured ‘by concealment of a material fact or by willful misrepresentation.’ Suit may be brought by the United States Attorney in the District Court ‘upon affidavit showing good cause.’ The citizen whose citizenship is challenged has 60 days “in which to make answer to the petition of the United States.” United States v. Minker, 350 U.S. 179, 196 (1956) (Douglas, J. concurring) (citing current 8 U.S.C. § 1451(a)). Through § 1451 Congress has granted jurisdiction to “the district court of the United States in the judicial district in which the naturalized citizen may reside at the time of bringing suit, for the purpose of revoking and setting aside the order admitting such person to citizenship and canceling the certificate of il naturalization”; and has mandated that the invocation of that jurisdiction “shall be the duty of the United States attorneys for the respective districts” which may only to “institute proceedings” under § 1451 “upon affidavit showing good cause therefor[.]” 8 U.S.C. § 1451(a); see also, United States v. Minker, 350 U.S. 179, 195 (1956) (Black, J. concurring) (“[r]esponsibility for initiating such cases is placed on district attorneys ‘upon affidavit showing good cause therefor.”’) (emphasis in the original) (quoting 8 U.S.C. § 1451(a)). This Court has reiterated § 1451(a) mandatory requirements by affirming dismissal where a United States Attorney failed to file an “affidavit showing good cause” but rather filed a verified complaint, stating: “We hold that [§1451] is the only Section under which a United States attorney may institute denaturalization proceedings, and that the affidavit showing good cause is a procedural prerequisite to the maintenance of proceedings thereunder.” United States v. Zucca, 351 U.S. 91, 99 (1956); Bindczyck v. Finucane, 342 U.S. 76, 83 (1951) (‘Congress formulated a selfcontained, exclusive procedure[] [w]ith a view to protecting the Government against fraud while safeguarding citizenship from abrogation except by a clearly defined procedure, Congress insisted on the detailed, explicit provisions of § 15 [current section 1451].” Five years later this Court “h[e]ld that a dismissal for failure to file the affidavit of good cause is a dismissal ‘for lack of jurisdiction,’ within the meaning of the exception under Rule 41(b).” Costello v. United States, 365 U.S. 265, 285 (1961). iii The Eighth Circuit in its opinion below determined that Costello and Zucca were a product of the era of “drive-by jurisdictional rulings” which “have no precedential effect” Steel Co. v. Citizens for a Better Environment, 523 U.S. 83, 91 (1998) by noting that Costello and Zucca “predate the Supreme Court’s concerted effort to use that term in a more disciplined fashion.” (Pet. App. 10) (citing, Henderson ex rel. Henderson v. Shinseki, 562 U.S. 428, 485 (2011); Union Pac. R.R. v. Bhd. of Locomotive Engrs & Trainmen Gen. Comm. of Adjustment, 558 U.S. 67, 81 (2009). Nonetheless, Costello's holding has had continued vitality not just in denaturalization proceedings, but has been cited as the basis as an example of the doctrine of “curable defec