38.2 (7) TEMPROSA.DOCX38.2 (7) TEMPROSA.DOCX (DO NOT DELETE)
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BERKELEY JOURNAL OF INTERNATIONAL LAW
1/16/2021 12:59 PM
[Vol. 38:2
A.
B.
Critical Rhetoric as Theory .......................................................... 265
Statelessness as an Ideograph ...................................................... 268
1. Vicissitudes of Statelessness .................................................. 270
2. Explaining the Ideograph: State Privilege and State Gaze.... 272
C. Statelessness Identification as a Playing Field of Ideologies....... 274
1. Formalism in Stateless Determinations ................................. 275
2. The Ideology of Discretionism ............................................... 280
D. Statelessness in the Resulting Rhetoric of Naming and
Categorizations ............................................................................ 284
IV. A CALL: REVISIONING STATELESSNESS IN INTERNATIONAL LAW .............. 286
A. Inadequacy of Existing Attempts to Change the Statelessness
Definition ..................................................................................... 288
B. Components of a Proposed Protection-Oriented Framework
Agenda ......................................................................................... 292
1. From Formalism to Functionalism ........................................ 292
a. Focusing on the Right to Nationality .............................. 293
b. Piercing the Veil of Citizenship Status............................ 296
c. Other Related Considerations ........................................ 299
2. From State Discretionism to Greater Responsibilities for the
International Community ....................................................... 301
a. International Institutional Statelessness Identification and
Determination ................................................................. 301
b. State Duties of Inquiry and Cooperation ........................ 304
CONCLUSION .................................................................................................... 305
"Before the law sits a gatekeeper. To this gatekeeper comes a man from the country
who asks to gain entry into the law. But the gatekeeper says that he cannot grant
him entry at the moment . . . The man from the country has not expected such difficulties: the law should always be accessible for everyone, he thinks, but . . . he
decides that it would be better to wait until he gets permission to go inside. The
gatekeeper gives him a stool and allows him to sit down at the side in front of the
gate. There he sits for days and years."
– Excerpt from Franz Kafka's "Before the Law" 1
INTRODUCTION: CITIZENSHIP (OR THE LACK OF IT) IN OUR STATIST WORLD
Over the last two and a half centuries, the State and its forerunners have held
power over norms that regulate access to citizenship, 2 which includes the rights
1. THE COMPLETE STORIES 5 (Nahum Glatzer ed., 1971).
2. Used in this Article, citizenship is nationality in its legal sense as most legal documents and
theorists refer to it as one and the same concept.