38.2 (7) TEMPROSA.DOCX38.2 (7) TEMPROSA.DOCX (DO NOT DELETE) 268 BERKELEY JOURNAL OF INTERNATIONAL LAW 1/16/2021 12:59 PM [Vol. 38:2 studies, Aristotle is credited for a normative view of rhetoric centered around the role of the State. 163 Rhetoric is "an expertise in discharging public speaking roles" 164 that is employed as people deliberate on State matters. In the words of Neil MacCormick: "[w]herever there is a process of public argumentation, there is rhetoric." 165 The enterprise includes decisions on laws, policies, and court rulings. 166 It has long been recognized that argumentation about the organization and management of the State is a rhetorical process. 167 State management, insofar as it entails communicating with others through persuasion, is an exercise of rhetorical power at the most basic level. 168 Why certain management ideas are more widely accepted than others is likewise attributed to rhetoric. 169 The determination of status—who belongs and does not belong in polities—is thus a way in which the State organizes and manages itself. The features of this rhetorical enterprise are analyzed in the next subsections. On the whole, critical rhetoric prescribes an analysis of power and knowledge to examine an ideograph. 170 The focus is on how power is both marginalizing and productive. 171 What ideologies underlie discourses? What symbolisms, if any, accompany language? How do those symbolisms and ideologies influence the overall rhetoric? Applied to law, "rhetoric creates ideology and ideology creates, empowers and sustains law." 172 Statelessness as an Ideograph The 1954 Statelessness Convention's object and purpose is to protect stateless persons who are not refugees. 173 Scholars interpret this directive as securing stateless persons with "the widest possible enjoyment of their human rights and regulating their status." 174 States are supposed to accord these persons the widest 163. JAMES DOW, PASSIONS & PERSUASION IN ARISTOTLE'S RHETORIC 226 (2015). 164. Id. at 65. 165. NEIL MACCORMICK, RHETORIC AND THE RULE OF LAW: A THEORY OF LEGAL REASONING 17 (2005) (arguing "[n]otwithstanding the restriction to what is rationally arguable, the very idea of law as arguable leads us at once to consider the rhetorical character of legal argumentation. Wherever there is a process of public argumentation, there is rhetoric."). 166. JAMES DOW, PASSIONS & PERSUASION IN ARISTOTLE'S RHETORIC 65 (2015). 167. CHRISTOPHER HOOD, THE ART OF THE STATE: CULTURE, RHETORIC, AND PUBLIC MANAGEMENT 177 (1998). 168. Id. at 192. 169. Id. 170. McKerrow, supra note 18, at 91. 171. Id. 172. Inniss, supra note 21, at 665. 173. See 1954 Statelessness Convention, supra note 16, preamble at 5 (stating that the UN has expressed concern for stateless persons and endeavored to assure them the "widest possible exercise" of rights, and that many stateless persons are not covered by the 1951 Refugee Convention). 174. See UNHCR, Expert Meeting, supra note 100, at 2.