YALE HUMAN RIGHTS & DEVELOPMENT L.J. VOL. XIX Article The Risk of Statelessness: Reasserting a Rule for the Protection of the Right to Nationality David C. Baluarte† A global effort to combat statelessness and defend the universal right to nationality is currently underway. Nevertheless, questions persist about the proper scope of the right to nationality, the appropriate form of statelessness protection, and the legal limits of state discretion to deny or deprive an individual of nationality. These questions have animated a heated transnational debate about statelessness in Hispaniola, where the government of the Dominican Republic has designed a legal system that excludes persons of Haitian descent from Dominican nationality. Central to this conflict is a question about whether actions by the Dominican state leave persons of Haitian descent stateless—without nationality anywhere in the world. This question has been the subject of a decade-long dialogue between the Inter-American Court of Human Rights and the Dominican justice system, which have expressed manifestly contrary views about the existence of statelessness in Hispaniola. In its most recent decision on the matter, the Inter-American Court declared that the Dominican state has an obligation to grant nationality to children born in its territory who face a “risk of statelessness.” This Article is the first to explore this doctrinal development, and it raises both legal and practical concerns regarding this new rule of protection. This Article warns of potential parallels between the “risk of statelessness” and “de facto” statelessness, which is a category † Associate Clinical Professor of Law and Director of the Immigrant Rights Clinic at the Washington and Lee University School of Law. The author would like to thank the Frances Lewis Law Center at Washington and Lee for its support of this article. Comments during the presentation of this Article to the faculties of Wake Forest University School of Law, American University Washington College of Law, and Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law were very helpful in sharpening the analysis. Jaya Ramji-Nogales, Mark Drumbl, and Rick Wilson provided valuable insights. Finally, the author has deep appreciation for conversations with colleagues from the Institute on Statelessness and Inclusion and the Americas Network on Nationality and Statelessness on matters of nationality. 47 Electroniccopy copyavailable available at: at: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3111529 Electronic https://ssrn.com/abstract=3111529