702 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF INTERNATIONAL LAW [Vol. 105:694 persistence of the regime of perpetual allegiance.41 The committee acknowledged that this proposal was not supported in existing practice.42 Ambitious as it was, and straining to hold that “under international law the power of a state to confer its nationality is not unlimited,” the Harvard group worked from the premise that “each state may determine by its law who are its nationals.”43 The League of Nations, meanwhile, had been working on its own track. In 1926, a committee of experts drew up a more modest draft convention on nationality.44 Although the committee’s rapporteur acknowledged that it “would certainly be an advantage” if states were to permit expatriation, require election, and forebear from extending citizenship by descent beyond the first externally resident generation, he concluded that prospects for such an agreement were “premature.”45 The draft agreement addressed problems of nationality relating to women and children. As for dual nationality, in contrast to the Harvard product, the League experts did not aim to reduce incidence of the status; instead, they looked to manage associated conflicts through constraints on the exercise of diplomatic protection.46 At the Hague Codification Conference, the resulting Convention on Certain Questions Relating to the Conflict of Nationality Laws (Hague Convention) fell well short of eliminating nationality practices as a source of international conflict. While recognizing the virtue of an international agreement to settle nationality issues, the convention’s preamble acknowledged the prematurity of reaching a uniform solution to problems of dual nationality and statelessness. The instrument worked from a clear premise of state discretion: “It is for each State to determine under its own law who are its nationals . . . . Any question as to whether a person possesses the nationality of a particular State shall be determined in accordance with the law of that State.”47 Falling well short of the Harvard proposal, the treaty contained no provision for mandatory election for dual nationals at an age in majority, and it did not limit extending nationality by descent.48 The treaty did not require states to permit expatriation except when an individual possessed two nationalities “without any voluntary act on his part,” and then only upon the satisfaction of conditions imposed by the state whose nationality the individual 41 Id., Art. 13. See id. at 46 (“[a]t present it cannot be said that there is any general agreement upon the ‘right of expatriation’”). 43 Id., Art. 2. 44 See League of Nations Experts Committee, supra note 13, at 59 – 60. The experts committee was chaired by former Swedish prime minister Hjalmar Hammarskjöld (father of the future UN secretary-general Dag Hammarskjöld) and was dominated by European jurists. See Letter from the Director of the Legal Section of the League of Nations to the President of the International Society of International Law (Apr. 1, 1925), reprinted in 20 AJIL 1 n.1 (Special Supp. 1926) (listing members of the League of Nations committee). The United States was represented by George Wickersham, who also participated in the Harvard project. The committee’s report on nationality was drafted by Szymon Rundstein, a distinguished Polish lawyer. See id.; see also Anna Maria Szczepan Wojnarska, Syzmon Rundstein, MUSEUM OF THE HISTORY OF POLISH JEWS, at http://www.sztetl.org.pl/en/person/45,szymonrundstein/. 45 See League of Nations Experts Committee, supra note 13, at 32; Flournoy, Nationality Convention, supra note 35, at 471 (“agreement upon a single rule will be difficult to accomplish”). 46 See League of Nations Experts Committee, supra note 13, at 59 – 60. Article 1 of the draft would have required parties to refrain from exercising protection against a state of which an individual was considered a national from “the moment of [his] birth.” Article 6 provided that a state of naturalization could not exercise protection against “the State whose subject he originally was,” if still considered a national of that state. See id. 47 Hague Convention on Nationality, supra note 16, Arts. 1, 2. 48 See Ruth Donner, Nationality, in HARVARD RESEARCH: CONTEMPORARY ANALYSIS, supra note 36, at 62– 65 (systematically comparing Harvard recommendations with results of Hague Convention). 42 This content downloaded from 82.196.111.31 on Thu, 07 Oct 2021 15:20:30 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms