the italian review of international and comparative law 2 (2022) 154–162 brill.com/iric Stateless Status and Expulsion from Italian Territory Some Remarks on the Recent Case Law of the Corte di Cassazione Note to: Corte di Cassazione (Sez. I penale), D.A., 22 June 2021, No. 24407 Simone Marinai Department of Law, University of Pisa, Pisa, Italy simone.marinai@unipi.it Abstract In this judgment the Corte di Cassazione addresses the issue of the prohibition on the expulsion of stateless persons guaranteed by Article 31 of the New York Convention of 1954 Relating to the Status of Stateless Persons and affirms that it represents an exception to the general rule under international law according to which every State has, in principle, the right to expel at any moment an alien from its territory. The decision is particularly interesting because it allows a reflection on the vulnerable condition of stateless persons, on the distinction between de jure and de facto statelessness, and on the burden and standard of proof in establishing statelessness. Keywords statelessness – de facto and de jure stateless – Corte di Cassazione – New York Convention of 1954 – expulsion of stateless persons – burden of proof Abstract of the Decision On 22 June 2021, the Corte Suprema di Cassazione annulled the conviction by the Giudice di Pace di Brescia of the defendant for the crime, provided for in the Italian Immigration Act (Testo unico sull’immigrazione, Legislative Decree of 25 July 1998, No. 286, Article 14, para. 5-quater), of failing to comply with an order to leave Italian territory. According to the Corte di Cassazione, the trial judge had failed to consider that the defendant was a stateless person and that, © Simone Marinai, 2022 | doi:10.1163/27725650-02010008 This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the cc by 4.0 license.