2011] AN INTERNATIONAL LAW OF CITIZENSHIP 701 Brown Scott33 observed that the “confusion” in this area was “so great, so universal, and so embarrassing, not to say exasperating,” that it could be remedied only through an international treaty.34 As part of the lead-up to the Hague meeting, the three subjects were taken up by a committee of highly prominent academics, practitioners, and policymakers35 under the sponsorship of Harvard Law School and with funding from John D. Rockefeller Jr. Billed as “a Research in International Law,” the project set out to devise draft conventions for the Hague topics.36 As noted by the Harvard Research, an “international code on nationality limited to a statement of existing law would be meager and of little practical value,”37 reinforcing the widely held view that international law had theretofore had little to say to the subject. In April 1929, the Harvard project issued an ambitious draft convention, together with explanatory materials, that would have resulted in a significant, though hardly complete, harmonization of nationality practice. The draft sought to bar nationality through descent beyond the second generation of persons born and resident abroad.38 While accepting the fact of dual nationality,39 the Harvard proposal would have imposed an election requirement under which dual nationals would have retained the nationality only of their countries of habitual residence as of the age of 23.40 To address a central source of bilateral disputes, the draft convention would have provided for the termination of original nationality upon naturalization in another country, thus eliminating the competing claims to individuals that resulted from the combination of migration and the 33 Scott served for many years as the editor in chief of the American Journal of International Law and then as president of the American Society of International Law. See FREDERIC L. KIRGIS, THE AMERICAN SOCIETY OF INTERNATIONAL LAW’S FIRST CENTURY 1906 –2006, at 16, 37 (2006). 34 JAMES BROWN SCOTT, OBSERVATIONS ON NATIONALITY 6 (1931). Scott’s short book on nationality is evidence of how loaded the subject of nationality was in the years surrounding the Hague Conference. It is a highly charged, openly emotional consideration of the subject, expressly denominated as “a plea” and reading as such. See also Garner, supra note 26, at 552 (concluding that “there ought to be no dissent as to the desirability of agreement” among states regarding nationality). 35 Among those included on the project’s advisory committee were Benjamin Cardozo, former secretary of state Elihu Root, and American Law Institute President George Wickersham. Among the academics were Edwin Borchard (Yale Law School), Charles Cheney Hyde (Columbia Law School), Philip Jessup (Columbia Law School), Francis Sayre (Harvard Law School), Quincy Wright (University of Chicago), and Manley O. Hudson (Harvard Law School), who directed the project (and would more than twenty years later himself undertake an important study of nationality practices). See Harvard Research, supra note 9, at 4 – 8. The effort was thus equivalent to a modern-day blue-ribbon commission. Hudson, Hyde, Jessup, and Wickersham were included on the subcommittee on nationality, of which Richard Flournoy Jr. served as reporter. Flournoy, an assistant to the solicitor of the Department of State, was a prolific writer on nationality issues. See, e.g., A COLLECTION OF NATIONALITY LAWS OF VARIOUS COUNTRIES (Richard W. Flournoy Jr. & Manley O. Hudson eds., 1929); Richard W. Flournoy Jr., Nationality Convention, Protocols and Recommendations Adopted by the First Conference on the Codification of International Law, 24 AJIL 467 (1930) [hereinafter Flournoy, Nationality Convention]; Richard W. Flournoy Jr., Suggestions Concerning an International Code on the Law of Nationality, 35 YALE L.J. 939 (1926); Richard W. Flournoy Jr., Dual Nationality and Election, 30 YALE L.J. 693 (1921). 36 See John P. Grant & J. Craig Barker, The Harvard Research: Genesis to Exodus and Beyond, in THE HARVARD RESEARCH IN INTERNATIONAL LAW: CONTEMPORARY ANALYSIS AND APPRAISAL 1 ( John P. Grant & J. Craig Barker eds., 2007). 37 Harvard Research, supra note 9, at 21; see also Flournoy, Nationality Convention, supra note 35, at 468. 38 Harvard Research, supra note 9, Art. 4. 39 Id., Art. 10 cmt. (“it is necessary to realize the fact that dual nationality does exist and will continue to exist unless all states will agree to adopt a single rule for nationality at birth”). 40 Id., Art. 12 cmt. at 41 (stating that the “object of the article is to afford a means by which dual nationality may be ended”). 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