38.2 (7) TEMPROSA.DOCX38.2 (7) TEMPROSA.DOCX (DO NOT DELETE) 2020] STATELESSNESS AS RHETORIC 1/16/2021 12:59 PM 265 boundaries; they can be permeable or airtight; they can overlap concentrically or form a Venn diagram. They can also vary in the firmness of their qualifications and disqualifications, as well as in their prerogatives and discretions. By this, I mean that they can allow multiple citizenships, identities, and permutations. Circles can also be stand-alone, thereby preventing dual or multiple citizenships. It has long been acknowledged that a law containing norms could be constitutive: "The law constitutes when it composes, constructs, or forms." 137 Constitutive norms "define an identity." 138 The law can also be the tool to constitute something and someone; 139 in this case, statelessness and stateless persons. The policy school of international law acknowledges lawmaking as a constitutive process: 140 in international relations, particularly in constructivism, States engage in constitutive practices. 141 One such practice, I argue, is the State's determination of whether a person is a citizen, which effectively determines that person's status as stateless or otherwise. II. THE REALITY: STATELESSNESS AS RHETORIC In this section, I propose arguments for revisioning the definition of statelessness. This section moves away from the top-line, dominant approaches to interpreting statelessness, and instead shifts to a searching, critical interpretation and application of the definition. Although the 1954 Statelessness Convention strives to secure for stateless people "the widest possible enjoyment of their human rights and regulating their status," 142 international law's definition in the treaty has been an avenue for the State to engage in rhetoric around citizenship and statelessness. I argue for a new statelessness definition that draws insights from critical rhetoric as a theory to analyze international law's definition of statelessness as applied in stateless status determination cases. A. Critical Rhetoric as Theory Critical rhetoric is used in this Article as an aid to theorize about the definition of statelessness as a concept. Critical rhetoric provides a set of 137. See, e.g., John Brigham, The Constitution of Interests: Institutionalism, CLS, and New Approaches to Sociolegal Studies, 10(2) YALE J. L. & HUM. 421–22 (1998). 138. Ted Hopf, The Promise of Constructivism in International Relations Theory, 23(1) INT'L SEC. 171, 193 (1998). 139. Id. 140. ALAN BOYLE & CHRISTINE CHINKIN, THE MAKING OF INTERNATIONAL LAW 11 (2007). 141. See Hopf, supra note 138, at 1983. 142. See UNHCR, Expert Meeting, supra note 100, at 2.