FRONTIERS RIGHTS SEEKING NATIONALITY THE JUDICIAL ODYSSEY OF APPLICANTS Different Interpretation of Legal Concepts in Nationality Lawsuits The majority of the nationality lawsuits is fraught with problems deriving from confusion and contradictory interpretations of legal concepts. In some cases, the arguments presented by the lawyers in their legal briefs were shallow, void of important specific data and supporting documentation, and in some cases, they used wrong legal grounds. The same could be found in the State’s counter arguments briefs as well as the opinions submitted by the Civil Status authorities, and to a certain degree by in courts’ decisions and rulings. Another malpractice by a number of Single Judges consists of requesting, before the lawsuit is officially registered or at the start of the case proceedings, from the Civil Status Officer to provide registration annotations of the Lebanese father’s civil records despite the fact that the lawsuit is filed with all the requested documentation recently obtained from the family civil registry extracts. Further, the Civil Status officer may also be asked sometimes to attend the hearings and give and/or offer his/her opinion on the lawsuit itself. This request is not legal, for the only mandatory time the Civil Status Officer has to attend and provide an opinion is in record correction lawsuits only.54 Sometimes the Civil Status officer goes beyond its role and asks for the state to be included in the case as a party in a non-contentious lawsuit. Nonetheless, these practices first change the registration lawsuits from non-contentious to a contentious one or a kind of “hybrid” lawsuits and secondly complicate the proceedings leading to further the court proceeding delays. SEEKING NATIONALITY | PART 3 ARTICLE 601 OF CCP STATES “Pursuant to the provisions of article 86 paragraph 1 clause 3, a third party affected by the non-contentious judgment may challenge it, within 8 days of the date of circulation of the judgment or one of its implementing procedures, before the judge or the court which issued this judgment. This may be done by a legal petition brief presenting the reasons for challenging the judgment and requesting the appearance of the person benefitting from the judgment before the judge or court. If the judgment was issued by the Head of the Court of First Instance, the challenge shall be submitted before said Court. The period for challenging a judgment for the State and public administrative institutions is 30 days from the date of notification. If the affected third-party was not notified of the non-contentious judgment or any of its implementing procedures, the third party may appeal the judgment by challenging it in accordance with the provisions of the previous paragraph throughout the period of prescription of its right. The challenge shall be considered judicially and immediately.” Lawyers’ Legal Briefs: Confusing legal grounds and void of necessary proves of evidence. In a few numbers of nationality lawsuits, plaintiffs’ lawyers filed short legal briefs that lacked proper argumentation and justification. They lacked detailed facts of the case. In some cases, the facts of the cases were misrepresented and/or contradicted the supporting documents and/or the statements of the witnesses. In other cases, the legal grounds are confused. For example, in one lawsuit, the submitted lawyer’s legal brief contained two distinctive legal grounds that cannot be used interchangeably and contradicting the case facts. The case involved a foundling born to unknown parents. However, the lawyer used the legal ground “born to unknown parents” and “born to parents of unknown nationality” which means that parents are known! In another lawsuit, the lawyer’s legal brief requested the nationality for the plaintiff on ground that he was born in Lebanon to parents “without nationality”. Further, the brief did not provide any details and facts as proof of evidence that the parents do not hold any nationality and the 60