2011] AN INTERNATIONAL LAW OF CITIZENSHIP 715 citizenship137 were constrained in any respect, much less that states were obligated in any context to accept the maintenance of multiple nationality.138 To the extent that nationality practice did implicate international law, moreover, it was primarily as a matter of resolving conflicts among state claims.139 Even Brownlie, who attacked the “orthodox view on the autonomy of States in the matter of nationality,” cautioned against “too ambitious prescriptions.”140 The interests of the state system may have dictated some limitation on the projection of nationality by individual states. But that did not significantly detract from state capacity to use nationality law as a tool for delineating the boundaries of national community. The traditional approach to nationality law can be conceived as a matter of human geography, confronted on the same terms as territorial geography.141 Both regimes have been forms of boundary maintenance. International law refused to draw territorial lines in any particular way, relying instead on history and control. It did evince a strong priority on allocating all territory to one state and one state only, in much the same way that international law found an objective in ensuring that all individuals had one nationality and only one nationality, working against the twin difficulties of statelessness and dual nationality. Sovereignty over space and over people were both predicates to the maintenance of international order. Although sovereignty over people obviously implicated individual interests, those interests were secondary. That international law has not, at least not until recently, trammeled on such self-definition is evidenced by the treatment of nationality in the 1966 Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (Racial Discrimination Convention).142 Even at the time of the Convention’s negotiation, the prohibition of racial discrimination was emerging as an important norm of international human rights (the treaty has since been accepted by more than 170 states).143 International law has highly circumscribed the use of racial classifications as a 137 See SHACHAR, supra note 2, at 136 (noting that “international law has traditionally refrained from intervening in the sovereign prerogative of states to define their citizenship laws, including their decision to rely upon particular birthright principles in the transmission of membership”). It was generally understood through the modern commentary that as a matter of positive law, jus soli and jus sanguinis were equally acceptable by way of determining citizenship at birth. See, e.g., WEIS, supra note 13, at 97–98. 138 Quite the contrary, of course: through the middle of the twentieth century, states were encouraged to eliminate the incidence of dual nationality, with no consideration of the possible individual interest in maintaining the status. See generally BAR-YAACOV, supra note 4. 139 See, e.g., DONNER, supra note 3, at 17; INETA ZIEMELE, STATE CONTINUITY AND NATIONALITY: THE BALTIC STATES AND RUSSIA: PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE AS DEFINED BY INTERNATIONAL LAW 195 (2005). That nationality in international law has been conceived as a matter of resolving conflicts is distinct from the role it has played— or not played—in choice-of-law issues (often denominated as “conflicts of laws”). Nationality has figured in choice-of-law issues, especially in civil law jurisdictions. In the common law, the concept of domicile has figured more prominently. See Karen Knop, Citizenship, Public and Private, 71 LAW & CONTEMP. PROBS. 309, 319 –21 (2008) (explaining use of domicile in private international law); see also infra note 271 and accompanying text (describing significance of residence and domicile in determining obligations to states). 140 Brownlie, supra note 14, at 300, 364; see also Chan, supra note 106, at 6 (commending “cautious approach” of Inter-American Court of Human Rights on the issue, “since probably no area is more sensitive to State sovereignty than the conferment or withdrawal of nationality”). 141 See Brownlie, supra note 14, at 290 (“Nationality is a problem, inter alia, of attribution, and regarded in this way resembles the law relating to territorial sovereignty.”); see also VAN PANHUYS, supra note 70, at 155. 142 International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, Mar. 7, 1966, 660 UNTS 195 [hereinafter Racial Discrimination Convention]. 143 UN General Assembly, Status of the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, Aug. 15, 2006, A/61/260, at http://www.unhcr.org/refworld/docid/453780f40.html; 1 Multilateral Treaties Deposited with the Secretary-General, ch. IV.2, UN Doc. ST/LEG/SER.E/25, UN Sales No. E.07.V.3 (2007), at http://treaties.un.org/doc/Publication/MTDSG/Volume%20I/Chapter%20IV/IV-2.en.pdf. 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