Option (Loss of Nationality) Case

• Docket Number: Case No. 114
• Date: 26 September 1934
• Court: Obsolete Court (Czechoslovakia)

Czechoslovakia, Supreme Administrative Court.

Case No. 114

Option (Loss of Nationality) Case.

Nationality — Loss of — Distinction between Option and Release from the Bonds of Nationality.

The Facts.—The Ministry of the Interior dismissed the request of the plaintiff for reinstatement into Czechoslovak nationality in accordance with § 40 of the (former Hungarian, now Czechoslovak) Law L of 1879 (as to which see below). The request was refused on the ground that the plaintiff had acquired Hungarian nationality by option, and thereby definitely lost his former Czechoslovak nationality.

Held: that the appeal must be dismissed. “According to the provisions of § 40 of Law L of 1879 a person is entitled to be re-instated, on request, into Czechoslovak nationality if after having lost that nationality by release from its bonds1 or by absence from Czechoslovak territory2 he returned to that territory and obtained the promise of citizenship in a Czechoslovak commune. … Option is an act by which a person availing himself of a right granted to him by a legal provision assumes a new nationality, giving up at the same time the previous one, solely by his own will and without the co-operation or even against the will of the State to which he

hitherto belonged. … On the other hand, release from the bonds of nationality is an act by which the competent authority gives its assent that the person concerned may withdraw from the bonds of nationality, so that the loss of nationality is a consequence of a concordant will both of the authority and of the person concerned. … It follows that loss of nationality by option...