What are the origins and effects of legal ambiguity in authoritarian regimes? Using a detailed case study of nationality rights in Jordan – which draws from interviews with 210 Jordanian political officials, judges, lawyers, activists, and citizens/residents – we develop a framework for understanding how legal ambiguity emerges, and how it matters, under authoritarianism. We first conceptualize four discrete forms in which legal ambiguity manifests: lexical ambiguity (in legal texts); substantive ambiguity (in status as law); conflictual ambiguity (between contradictory legal rules); and operational ambiguity (in enforcement processes). We then scrutinize the emergence and effects of legal ambiguity in Jordanian nationality policy by integrating historical process tracing, detailed interview evidence, and a content analysis of archival documents, laws, and court verdicts pertaining to nationality rights. Our findings contribute to scholarship on legal ambiguity, authoritarian legality, and discretionary state authority by showing that (1) crisis junctures make the emergence of legal ambiguity more likely; (2) legal ambiguity takes a variety of different forms that warrant conceptual disaggregation; and (3) different forms of legal ambiguity often have disparate effects on how authoritarian state power is organized and experienced in public life.

Do locals discriminate against themselves by favoring foreigners with higher expected purchasing power? Drawing on theories of prejudice, discrimination, and colonialism, I argue that in colonized and post-colonial countries, local home sellers discriminate against local potential homebuyers while favoring foreigners with expected higher purchasing power, anticipating a more profitable transaction. I support this argument with evidence from a preregistered online audit study targeting discriminatory attitudes toward local home buyers. In the study, fictitious home buyers with distinctive language and ethnic names emailed 1,512 home sellers (realtors and homeowners) across all municipalities in Puerto Rico. Home sellers reported more houses available to Americans and invited them to more house showings than Puerto Ricans. My estimates indicate that ethnic discrimination exists in the Puerto Rican housing market. These findings provide new insights into ethnic dynamics in colonized and post-colonial societies and underscore concerns about recent legislation that turned Puerto Rico into a tax haven.

In the 1920s, Ichikawa Sadanji and Morita Kanya conducted two rounds of kabuki tours in China, which clearly revealed the mechanism of misinterpretation and misplacement in the (re)construction of the cultural identities of Chinese and Japanese theatre. Both had been modelled upon each other in the context of intercultural communications in the early twentieth century. Some Chinese theatre critics indicated that Chinese xiqu should absorb the values of modernity identified by them in the Morita troupe’s kabuki performances. In contrast, Ichikawa Sadanji’s tours in Northeast China and his subsequent visit to Beijing inspired kabuki to imbibe a new spirit of the times from Chinese xiqu, an impure ‘Eastern Spirit’ paradoxically manifested in a ‘purified’ theatrical Chineseness. The positive aspect of ‘misplaced misinterpretations’ by kabuki and xiqu of each other’s cultural images and values lies in the fact that it afforded the two theatre traditions a huge momentum for assimilating each other’s ‘Otherness’ to break their own tradition’s exclusiveness.

The Nottebohm judgment from the International Court of Justice (ICJ) has recently come under attack in the context of the European Commission's position on “golden passports” programmes. The judgment has long received intense criticism from a consensus of scholars. This article challenges the conventional wisdom of Nottebohm. The ICJ did not, as critics argue, depart from international law on nationality, nor did it seek to create an international rule based on a “genuine link” requirement. A closer look at the majority's reasoning reveals that the ICJ's conception of nationality as something more than a mere formal classification was prompted by problems that can arise precisely from the phenomenon of globalization, including the instrumentalization of nationality. It further shows that the “substance-over-form” approach adopted by Nottebohm may, or already does, operate in more contemporary contexts.

In November 2023 the United Nations (UN) General Assembly and Security Council elected (in one case, re-elected) five judges to the International Court of Justice. The electoral system is considered to be overly politicized and to pay lip service to the requirements that judges must be elected on the basis of their qualifications, regardless of their nationality, and that in the body as a whole, the representation of the main forms of civilization and the principal legal systems of the world should be assured. Several amendments to the system of nominations and elections have been proposed that would require a reform of the Court's Statute. This article proposes four measures that could be adopted without amending the Statute or encroaching on the prerogatives of national groups, UN organs or Member States: (1) ensure the representation of the principal legal systems, in part by promoting regional diversity on the bench; (2) remove the use of nationality as a factor in casual elections; (3) establish a vetting process and public hearings; and (4) promote a single vote for Security Council members. It argues that the measures proposed would lead to a change in the present culture of nominations and elections towards one that favours the qualification of the judges over political considerations.

If all national identity is performative, the Northern Irish national identity offers a particularly pronounced model of this performative instability. Such precarity was emphasized when the 2016 UK EU ‘Brexit’ referendum raised contentious questions over Northern Irish citizenship. This article explores how two recent Northern Irish performance pieces, David Ireland’s Cyprus Avenue (2016) and Clare Dwyer Hogg’s Hard Border (2018), probe the unsettled plurality of Northern Irish national identity through the casting of actor Stephen Rea in their respective central roles. Rea’s own personal and professional history, as a figure inflected in the public mind with an extreme range of potential ‘Northern Irish identities’, encapsulates the shifting boundaries of an unstable, performative spectrum of ethno-national selfhood. This article explores how the lingering memories of Rea’s on- and offstage past offer a fittingly multilayered, even contradictory, representation of contemporary Northern Irish identity.

This article examines interstate competitions over “Syrians” whose legal status as Ottoman subjects was not yet terminated by a peace treaty at the end of World War I. Focusing mainly on occupied Istanbul, it traces French efforts to protect or bring Syrians back home to a “Syria.” Given that Syria was still in the making, the stakes here were high and determined postwar reconfigurations that connected Istanbul and Beirut. I argue that competition over Syrians in occupied Istanbul—especially the wealthier and those with military experience—proved critical in the construction of new diplomatic and legal significance accorded to the categories of “Syria” and “Syrian” in the early 20th century. In addition to offering new insights into the dismantling of the Ottoman Empire, the article historicizes projections of imperial influence after World War I and sheds new light on the foundations of French mandate rule in Syria and Lebanon.

International Court of Justice — Provisional measures — Prima facie jurisdiction — International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, 1965 (“CERD”) — Article 22 — Whether the Court having prima facie jurisdiction ratione materiae — Distinction between “national origin” and “nationality” under CERD — Whether procedural preconditions to the Court’s jurisdiction met — Prior negotiation — Exhaustion of CERD-based procedures — Plausibility — Whether the acts of which Qatar complained were plausibly acts of racial discrimination — Irreparable prejudice — Urgency — Whether evidence submitted by Qatar proving that the rights claimed were under a real and imminent risk of irreparable prejudice — Reports of international organizations as evidence — Unilateral undertaking — Statement of 5 July 2018 by UAE

International Court of Justice — Provisional measures requested by respondent State — Whether extending to protection of procedural rights — Procedural rights arising under Article 22 of CERD — Right to obtain compliance with provisional measures indicated earlier — Prima facie jurisdiction — Provisional measures for non-aggravation and non-extension of the dispute — Whether capable of being indicated only if provisional measures for protection of rights also indicated

International Court of Justice — Preliminary objections — Whether Court having jurisdiction under Article 22 of International Convention on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, 1965 — Whether discrimination based on nationality prohibited by CERD — Whether Qatar’s claim of discriminatory measures by United Arab Emirates falling within scope of CERD Treaties — Interpretation — Scope — International Convention on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, 1965 — Article 1(1) — Meaning of “national origin” — Whether including current nationality — Object and purpose of treaty — Travaux préparatoires — Whether CERD intending to prohibit discrimination based on nationality — Whether Qatar’s claim of discriminatory measures by United Arab Emirates falling within scope of CERD

Human rights — International Convention on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, 1965 — Article 1(1) — Meaning of “national origin” — Whether including current nationality — Whether discrimination based on nationality prohibited by CERD — Whether Qatar’s claim of discriminatory measures by United Arab Emirates falling within scope of CERD

Nationality — Nature of citizenship — Bond between State and citizen — Whether distinct from “national origin” — International Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Racial Discrimination, 1965, Article 1

International tribunals — United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination — Weight to be given to practice of Committee — Jurisprudence of regional human rights courts — Relevance — Whether discrimination based on nationality prohibited by CERD

International tribunals — Jurisdiction and admissibility — United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination — International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, 1965 — Discrimination on ground of national or ethnic origin — Inter-State communication — Whether Committee lacking jurisdiction — Scope of Article 11 of Convention — Nationality issue — Whether exception to jurisdiction — Interpretation of concept of racial discrimination prohibited by Convention — Whether raising preliminary issue of competence ratione materiae — Issue to be examined at same time as admissibility — Whether jurisdiction extending only to current and ongoing violations of Convention — Whether communication admissible — Non-exhaustion of domestic remedies — Issue to be examined jointly with merits — Concurrent proceedings — Nationality — Appointment of ad hoc Conciliation Commission — International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, 1965, Articles 11(2) and 12(1)

Human rights — Rights to non-discrimination — International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, 1965 — International law — Whether fight against terrorism justifying discrimination — Discrimination on ground of national or ethnic origin — Applicant State enforcing coercive measures against respondent State in 2017 — Whether respondent State failing to enact measures to prohibit racial discrimination — Whether respondent State promoting racial discrimination — Whether respondent State violating international law — Whether respondent State violating Articles 2, 4, 5 and 6 of International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, 1965 — Whether Committee having jurisdiction — Admissibility of communication

International tribunals — United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination — International Court of Justice — Concurrent proceedings — Article 22 of International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, 1965 — Whether principle of lis pendens or electa via applicable — Admissibility of communication

Treaties — Interpretation — International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, 1965 — Article 1 — Prohibition of racial discrimination — Interpretation of concept of racial discrimination — Discrimination on ground of national or ethnic origin — Meaning of national origin — “Nationality” excluded from definition — Distinction between citizens and non-citizens — United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination — General Recommendation No 30 (2004) on discrimination against non-citizens — Differences of treatment based on nationality — Whether constituting discrimination as prohibited by Convention — Applicant State’s allegations against respondent State in communication concerning violations of Convention — Whether allegations concerning ongoing and current violations of Convention — Issue relating to essential facts and to be examined at merits stage — Whether Committee having competence ratione materiae — Admissibility of communication

Nationality — Distinction between citizens and non-citizens — United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination — International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, 1965 — Article 1 — Prohibition of racial discrimination — Interpretation of concept of racial discrimination — Discrimination on ground of national or ethnic origin — General Recommendation No 30 (2004) on discrimination against non-citizens — Differences of treatment based on nationality — Whether constituting discrimination as prohibited by Convention — Allegations in communication concerning racial discrimination — Whether Committee having competence ratione materiae — Admissibility of communication