2021 Statelessness & Citizenship Review 3(2) country through their lineage. Under the modified s 1(e) test, this would trigger the factual assessment under the ‘genuine and effective link’ limb. At the time of the appeals, both T and L had lived their entire lives in Malaysia, T in the care of his adoptive family and L with his father and paternal grandmother. It is a safe assumption that the centre of their interests was also within Malaysia. Given that T had no information about his lineage, it would have been impossible for him to take any steps towards acquiring the citizenship of another country. Likewise, L, although born to a Thai mother and seemingly entitled to Thai citizenship, had not (on the information available) taken any steps towards acquiring it nor manifested any such intent. On the facts, both appellants thus, seemingly, had genuine and effective links with Malaysia, and under the modified test would accordingly acquire citizenship by operation of law. The adoption of the Nottebohm principle in the modified s 1(e) test can therefore produce different, positive outcomes for applicants and remedy the legal uncertainty arising from the application of the existing test. More importantly, Than and Lim are representative of two of the five larger categories of persons identified as prima facie meeting the s 1(e) requirements for Malaysian citizenship in Jamie Liew’s work. 61 Whilst each case within those categories (and whether the applicant has a genuine and effective link with Malaysia) will turn on their own facts, the archetypes in Than (an abandoned child) and Lim (a child born to a foreign mother and a Malaysian father) are not unique to those appeals. Adopting the principle in the modified s 1(e) test, therefore, helps achieve our objective of ensuring that citizenship is conferred upon those falling within the remit of s 1(e). HURDLES AGAINST THE ADOPTION OF THE ‘GENUINE AND EFFECTIVE LINK’ PRINCIPLE Having considered the application of the ‘genuine and effective link’ principle in the modified s 1(e) test, we turn now to consider what may be termed the ‘how’ problem. The ‘genuine and effective link’ principle has not been explicitly recognised at Malaysian law, although as I seek to show later in the article, its rationale underpins the conferral of citizenship via naturalisation in art 19 of the Constitution. The question, therefore, is how it may be recognised and subsequently adopted by the courts to allow for the modification of the existing test. The problem here is primarily contextual: the effective/dominant nationality principle developed in Nottebohm has generally arisen in diplomatic protection cases concerning persons with multiple nationalities. As the ICJ in Nottebohm explicitly set out, diplomatic protection issues arise at the international level, but a state’s discretion to confer citizenship upon individuals is strictly a matter for domestic law. Thus, the Court’s ruling that N did not have any genuine and effective links to Liechtenstein and that the state could not invoke diplomatic protection as against Guatemala did not itself affect his status as a citizen of Liechtenstein. 62 How then can this principle be effectively adopted into Malaysian domestic law? As a matter of law, a direct legal transplantation may be impossible due to the aforementioned contextual differences between international and domestic 61 62 Liew (n 24) 107–22. Nottebohm (n 1) 20–21. 322