Neha Jain Not all contributors are equally down on international law, however. Rainer Bauböck and Ramesh Ganohariti both see merit in a robust international legal norm that prohibits citizenship weaponisation and put forward specific principles that should guide the development of this norm,336 whereas Noora Lori urges exploring the potential of inter-state leverage and regional mobility agreements as legal and non-legal avenues that could complement any emerging global norms to rein in weaponisation.337 The differences in views amongst the contributors reveal fundamental tensions in the concept of citizenship on the one hand, and the legitimacy of international law on the other. Džankić and Kingston’s response touches on one of the core questions, not just in law, but in political theory on why we value citizenship in the first place and whether it is best conceived as a state of being––or a practice that is lived and enacted. Jacob-Owens’ important intervention on the compromised character of international law implicates age-old questions on whether the master’s house can be dismantled using the master’s tools. The debate between Spiro, Ganohariti, Bauböck, and Lori mirrors the ones that international lawyers have had for decades on the efficacy of soft law versus hard law and whether one is necessarily superior to the other. 338 To try and tackle these issues with the seriousness they deserve would be an ambitious undertaking even for a book project, let alone a rejoinder. While I am sympathetic to Džankić and Kingston’s republican view of citizenship that foregrounds political education and agency,339 my more immediate concern is how the law should evolve in the here and now which is marked by its relative absence. Likewise, I heed Jacob-Owens’ call to be ever-vigilant towards a seemingly progressive international legal norm being misused for ends that hurt rather than help vulnerable individuals as well as collectives.340 I nonetheless remain cautiously optimistic about the ability of a precisely crafted international legal rule to play an important role in curtailing weaponised citizenship. Not because any such norm will automatically invite compliance–– which legal norm, domestic or international, can claim perfect compliance anyway?––but because it may be the thumb that helps tip the measuring scale that a state uses in calculating the risks versus rewards of implementing measures such as passportisation in the direction of non-weaponisation. This does not mean that the additional factors that Spiro and Lori emphasize,341 such as regional legal instruments, horizontal counter-inter-state responses and leverage, or condemnation by international NGOs, will be irrelevant. To the contrary, they will be important additional counterweights in tilting the scale away from weaponisation. But precisely because horizontal non-legal measures are reliant on the good will and self-interest of states and other entities, they will be prone to selective outrage and ad hocism, similar to the differential treatment one witnesses in another equally important domain of sovereignty –– border control –– where we have seen the exceptionally progressive treatment of Ukrainian asylum seekers versus refugees from other parts of the world.342 Will an international legal rule make the problem worse? Even some of the contributors who may be positively disposed to international law share some common ground with the international law sceptics in having reasons to be concerned about the collateral effects of an international legal rule regulating oppressive nationality. Some of these relate to the feasibility of devising a rule that will be sufficiently precise to fully account for ground realities, as Eleanor Knott, Lior Erez, and Timothy Jacob-Owens highlight.343 The worry is that no rule would be able to neutralise the methods through which states wield weaponised citizenship without simultaneously inflicting damage on some of the vulnerable or minority populations that deserve international protection. 336 337 338 339 340 341 342 343 53 Ganohariti 2022; Bauböck 2023. Lori 2023. Spiro 2023; Ganohariti 2022; Bauböck 2023; and Lori 2023. Džankić 2022; Kingston 2022. Jacoh-Owens 2022. Spiro 2023; Lori 2023. Ramji-Nogales, J. (2022), ‘Ukrainians in Flight: Politics, Race, and Regional Solutions’, AJIL Unbound, 116, 150-154. Knott 2022; Erez 2023; Jacob-Owens 2022. Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies