2018] NATIONALITY AND DEFINING “THE RIGHT TO HAVE RIGHTS” S869 after the injury.” 85 The “shifting sands of nationality” 86 could leave individuals stateless and rights-less, without access to diplomatic protection. Even with the post-World War I regulations on the extension of nationality, worries about statelessness and the potential inaccessibility of diplomatic protection were well-founded. In 1921, two scholars speculated that the State-based system under the League of Nations, which provided no mechanism for individuals—rather than States— to vindicate their rights, was “condemned to failure from its inception.” 87 At the heart of these scholars’ prescient work was a call for the individual as the subject of international law, or the development of a supranational human rights regime that could protect against and provide universal recourse for violations. 88 II. WORLD WAR II AND THE CRYSTALLIZATION OF CUSTOMARY INTERNATIONAL LAW The lessons of World War I and the treaty regimes of the interwar period proved insufficient to prevent nationality-related crises during and after World War II. Again, war shocked the global system, this time challenging the old model of the role of and relationship between States and individuals. States began altering their nationality practices even during the war. By the late twentieth century, international instruments, customary international law, and judgments from the International Court of Justice, the PCIJ’s successor, had cabined States’ authority in establishing lawful nationality practices. The developments of the post-World War II period bore first and foremost on the way in which nationality was conferred or regulated at the international level. They set limitations on when a State could naturalize or denationalize an individual without his or her consent. Further, they resolved questions regarding when nationality could be considered internationally “effective.” Second, the developments gave clearer substantive meaning to the previouslyamorphous concept of nationality. Nationality, as a matter of customary international law, dictated: the treatment afforded individuals 85. Dickson Car Wheel Company (U.S.A.) v. United Mexican States, 4 R. INT’L ARB. AWARDS 669, 678 (1931). 86. G.M.W. Jellinghaus & R.S. Fraser, The Status of the Individual in International Law, 30 INT’L L. ASS’N R. CONF. 289, 293 (1921). 87. Id. at 310. 88. Id. at 309. Electronic copy available at: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2954729