SAHNI ARTICLE 3.3.21 (WORD) (DO NOT DELETE) Spring 2021 Loss of Nationality Rights 5/6/2021 7:21 PM 117 for professional reasons.45 Years later Mr. Nottebohm relinquished his German nationality voluntarily and acquired nationality of Liechtenstein.46 His motive was for business reasons and not patriotism.47 The facts of Nottebohm illustrate how the possession of nationality is a crucial transnational precautionary measure for those who cross borders for work and other purposes. Mr. Nottebohm had revoked his German nationality one month after World War II began when he applied for and acquired the nationality of Liechtenstein.48 He did the latter to protect his assets in Guatemala and the U.S. He returned to Guatemala after obtaining his new nationality.49 Guatemala initially recorded the new nationality 50 but reversed its stance in 1943.51 It arrested Nottebohm as a German enemy alien and deported him to the U.S to be interned.52 In 1949 it expropriated his personal and business property.53 A State’s failure, however, to recognize an individual’s change of nationality does not necessitate that the prior nationality will apply automatically. Guatemala’s refusal to recognize Nottebohm’s Liechtenstein identity effectively deemed Nottebohm as stateless. The ICJ’s concurrence that Guatemala was not obliged to recognize the Liechtenstein nationality reinforced Nottebohm’s statelessness status. The reality, though, was that the Liechtenstein nationality was valid. The acquisition of that nationality extinguished the previous German identity under the laws of Germany.54 Fortunately, domestic legal systems today do not rely solely on the Nottebohm international law principles to grant nationality. In practise, individual States tend to use either or both of these criteria. A state may confer nationality by birthplace (jus soli) or by descent (jus sanguinis). 55 (1) Under the jus soli or ‘right of the soil’ principle, the State or territory where a person is born grants its nationality.56 Thus, a child will receive nationality at birth. 45. 46. 47. Id. at 25-26. Id. at 13, 15-16, 25. Id. at 26 (“Naturalization was asked for not so much for the purpose of obtaining a legal recognition of Nottebohm’s membership in fact in the population of Liechtenstein, as it was to enable him to substitute for his status as a national of a belligerent State that of a national of a neutral State, with the sole aim of thus coming within the protection of Liechtenstein but not of becoming wedded to its traditions, its interests, its way of life or of assuming the obligations-other than fiscal obligations-and exercising the rights pertaining to the status thus acquired.”). 48. Id. at 13. 49. Id. at 16, 25. 50. Id. at 17. 51. Id. at 19-20, 25. 52. Id. at 25; see also id. at 34 (Read, J., dissenting); see generally Josef L. Kunz, The Nottebhom Judgment (Second Phase), 54 AM. J. INT’L L. 536 (1960). 53. Liech. v. Guat., 1955 I.C.J. at 10 (majority opinion) & 31 (Klaestad, J., dissenting). 54. Id. at 13-14, 16. 55. See generally Patrick Weil, From Conditional to Secured and Sovereign: The New Strategic Link Between the Citizen and the Nation-State in a Globalized World, 9 INT’L J. CONST. L., 615 (2011) (analyzing the origins of the jus soli and jus sanguinis principles). 56. See id. at 617-18.