#nottebohm case

One of the most cited decisions over nationality in international law concerns a case heard before the International Court of Justice in 1955 between the governments of Liechtenstein and Guatemala. The debate was over which country Friedrich Nottebohm, a former citizen of Germany, “belonged” to. Nottebohm settled in Guatemala before World War I and opened and operated a successful business there for decades. But like his fellow ex-compatriot Max Stoeck, he was concerned that war in Europe would make him an enemy in the eyes of the Guatemalan government, and therefore a target of expropriation. So he did what any reasonable businessman would do: in 1939 he traveled to the principality of Liechtenstein and paid 37,500 Swiss francs for a passport (in spite of being technically sovereign, the microstate still does not have its own currency). Nottebohm lived in Guatemala as a citizen of Liechtenstein—or so he thought—until Guatemala declared war on Germany. Nottebohm, whom Guatemala now viewed as a German citizen, was captured, deported to the US, and interned until 1946. He lost his home, his considerable wealth, and his livelihood. The ensuing dispute concerned whether Guatemala was right to treat him as a German, even though the Germany he once belonged to had vanished and he’d gone out of his way to divorce himself from it by paying for Liechtenstein’s representation. The ICJ ruling found Guatemala in the right because the quality of Nottebohm’s ties to Germany were more “genuine” than his financial relationship to a neighboring principality. Siegelberg writes that the ruling “determined that nationality was not a rubber stamp that could be picked up and relinquished at a moment of emergency but a social category that reflected an authentic bond between the individual and the state.” For Kochenov, the decision “pushes citizenship’s inescapable totalitarianism to extremes”: not being able to choose your country, he argues, is feudal, not democratic.