38.2 (7) TEMPROSA.DOCX38.2 (7) TEMPROSA.DOCX (DO NOT DELETE) 2020] STATELESSNESS AS RHETORIC 1/16/2021 12:59 PM 281 twentieth century. Even though the State sets out to objectively define statelessness, State gaze becomes central regardless of its supposed objectivity. 272 I further claim in this subsection that discretionism is present in statelessness determinations. The absence of concrete parameters for determining statelessness breeds State discretion. 273 The reader of a text has a natural tendency to emphasize what is present, but absence "may be more important, more potent, as a source of information than mere presence." 274 In critical rhetoric, "[t]erms are not 'unconnected'; in the formation of a text, out of fragments of what is said, the resulting 'picture' needs to be checked against 'what is absent' as well as what is present." 275 Discretionism operates at a practical level in statelessness determinations. In evidentiary terms, since the 1954 Statelessness Convention is silent on matters of proof and evaluation, it has left these matters for a determining State to decide.276 This is where, so to speak, the rubber hits the road. The conspicuous silence of international law on these matters opens up discretion. 277 Proof and evaluation are matters crucial to the conduct of statelessness determinations. As discussed above, statelessness precariously requires proving and establishing a negative (that is, the absence of citizenship) and in many States—like the United States— citizenship is sometimes defined in constitutions and statutes "although most of the time it [is] not." 278 Despite the crucial role of evidence, there is no clear international rule on whether an individual applicant for stateless status should bear the burden to prove the negative, and associated with that, what evidentiary standards are adequate to prove the negative. One matter that had been particularly challenging for applicants in proving statelessness is documentation. The variety of documents that could prove citizenship (and the lack of it) is just enormous and reflective of the complexity of 272. By objectivity, I refer to the twin criteria of concreteness and normativity. Concreteness means that the law (in this case, the definition) is verifiable, or justifiable, independently of what anyone might think that the law should be. Normativity means that the definition is applicable even against a State or other legal subject which opposed its application to itself. See MARTTI KOSKENNIEMI, FROM APOLOGY TO UTOPIA: THE STRUCTURE OF INTERNATIONAL LEGAL ARGUMENT 25, 513 (2006). 273. See S.S. Lotus (Fr. V. Turk.), 1927 P.C.I.J. (ser. A) No. 10, at ¶ 87 (Sept. 7) [hereinafter Lotus Case]. 274. McKerrow, supra note 143, at 236. 275. McKerrow, supra note 18, at 107. 276. See infra note 291. 277. See Lotus Case, supra note 273, ¶ 87 (ruling that the absence of principles in international law gives the State discretion on how to act). 278. MARTHA S. JONES, BIRTHRIGHT CITIZENS: A HISTORY OF RACE AND RIGHTS IN ANTEBELLUM AMERICA 10 (2018).