Posts com a Tag ‘GATRELL Peter (Res)’

Mira Siegelberg / Foto: TAUVOD /

Mira Siegelberg’s important monograph retrieves and explores the debates in a range of different forums on a subject of fundamental significance: how, in the author’s words, ‘the problem of statelessness informed theories of rights, sovereignty, international legal order, and cosmopolitan justice, theories developed when the conceptual and political contours of the modern interstate order were being worked out, against the background of some of the most violent and catastrophic events in modern history’. With this bold opening statement, Siegelberg promises to cast fresh light on the history of the 20th century. The result is a scintillating display of erudition and an abundance of original insight on a subject that demands close scrutiny.

One way of telling the history of statelessness is to trace the origin of international agreements, notably the adoption by the United Nations General Assembly in 1954 of the Convention Relating to the Status of Stateless Persons in 1954, according to which a stateless person is anyone ‘who is not considered as a national by any State under the operation of its law’. Siegelberg does not dispute the importance of such a foundational moment—it forms part of her final chapter—but she insists upon the need for a non-teleological and more nuanced perspective, based upon a close reading of texts that emanated from multiple actors, including but not confined to a relatively small cast of international lawyers. These texts had consequences for the prospects of countless men and women. Statelessness thus becomes a touchstone for thinking about the relationship between the state, the international legal order, and the individual, and how that relationship was constantly reimagined. Leia Mais