38.2 (7) TEMPROSA.DOCX38.2 (7) TEMPROSA.DOCX (DO NOT DELETE) 266 BERKELEY JOURNAL OF INTERNATIONAL LAW 1/16/2021 12:59 PM [Vol. 38:2 methodological principles that inform our subsequent analysis. 143 For our purposes, this article utilizes critical rhetoric to theorize about the concept of a "stateless person" as articulated in the definition in the 1954 Statelessness Convention. Through critical rhetoric, legal artifacts (i.e., decisions and rulings) can be critiqued to uncover meanings. 144 Subjectivities can be exposed. 145 Within the critical humanist paradigm of communication studies, critical rhetoric assumes that reality is socially constructed. 146 Since lack of citizenship is a social construction—determined by, for, and because of the State—this lens sheds light on the discourse surrounding statelessness. States determine statelessness for, among other reasons, the purposes of treaty compliance, and people are stateless because of their perceived non-admission into the States' circles of citizenship. Critical rhetoric has been used in legal studies. 147 Considering power relations imprinted in the legal text, critical rhetoric is "capable of indicating and specifying the political dimensions of legal language and further capable of explaining its apparently non-communicative qualities . . ." 148 Jeremy Bentham, in his analysis of abstract and uncertain concepts, 149 was one of the earliest scholars to apply critical rhetoric in legal scholarship. Illustratively, Bentham posited that the word order is employed in rhetoric to cloak tyranny. 150 Whether in relation to a law that is transitory or permanent, order can be invoked to justify any good or bad action. 151 Bentham showed, using critical rhetoric, that a measure enacted in the maintenance of order can lead to the persecution of individuals. 152 In recent 143. See generally Raymie McKerrow, Critical Rhetoric, in ENCYCLOPEDIA OF COMMUNICATION THEORY 235 (Stephen Littlejohn & Karen Foss eds., 2009) (stating the non-exhaustive eight principles of critical rhetoric); see McKerrow, supra note 18, at 102–08 for the original articulation of the principles. 144. Marouf Hasian Jr., Myth and Ideology in Legal Discourse: Moving from Critical Legal Studies Toward Rhetorical Consciousness, 17 LEGAL STUD. F. 347, 349–50 (1994). 145. See Kent A. Ono & John M. Sloop, The Critique of Vernacular Discourse, 62 COMM. MONOGRAPHS 19, 25 (1995). Their allusion is poignant: "Just as rap, jazz, and black power may not always construct positive representations of culture, Japanese American discourse may not construct positive representations in every instance." Id. 146. See Judith Martin & Thomas Nakayama, Thinking Dialectically About Culture and Communication, 9 COMMC'N THEORY 1, 6–9 (1999). 147. E.g., Peter Goodrich, Rhetoric as Jurisprudence: An Introduction to the Politics of Legal Language, 4 OXFORD J. LEGAL STUD. 88, 90 (1984). 148. Id. at 90. In this regard, it is "an alternative to the 'authoritarian monologue' of dominant legal discourse which depicts itself as clear, technical and formal, but whose language rests on unarticulated exclusions that reflect power." Rebecca Moosavian, A just balance or just imbalance? The role of metaphor in misuse of private information, 7 J. MEDIA L. 196, 208 (2015). 149. Goodrich, supra note 147, at 88–89. 150. JEREMY BENTHAM, THE BOOK OF FALLACIES: FROM UNFINISHED PAPERS OF JEREMY BENTHAM, BY A FRIEND 232 (1824). 151. Id. at 232–33. 152. Id.