Rights of Citizenship (Establishment of Czechoslovak State) Case [Czechoslovakia, Supreme Administrative Court.]

• Jurisdiction: Republica Checa
• Date: 26 April 1921
• Docket Number: Case No. 5
• Court: Obsolete Court (Czechoslovakia)

Czechoslovakia, Supreme Administrative Court.

Case No. 5

Rights of Citizenship (Establishment of Czechoslovak State) Case.

Establishment of New State Time of Coming into Existence of the Czechoslovak State Effect of the Treaties of Peace Recognition Establishment of Czechoslovak Territorial Sovereignty in Slovakia.

The Facts.By a resolution of 27 March, 1920, the municipality of the town of Bratislava (Slovakia) accorded to the plaintiff, a citizen of the town of Sopron (Hungary), rights of citizenship (Heimatrecht). This resolution was subsequently quashed by the Ministry for Slovakia, acting in agreement with the Ministry of the Interior, on the ground that the plaintiff, being a foreigner, could not acquire rights of citizenship in a Czechoslovak commune.1 The plaintiff lodged an appeal with the Supreme Administrative Court, contending, inter alia, that at the time when the municipality of Bratislava had accorded to him the rights of citizenship that town was only de facto in the possession of the Czechoslovak State, while de jure it still belonged at that timetogether with the remaining Hungarian territoryto the undivided Hungarian State. It was contended that it was only as the result of the Treaty of Trianon that the occupation acquired a legal status; the Peace Treaty was constitutive and not merely declaratory.

Held by the Supreme Administrative Court: That the appeal failed. The establishment of the Czechoslovak State was a single, undivided act. The sovereignty of the Czechoslovak Republic had in fact already come into being through the revolution of 28 October, 1918, when the National Committee in fact seized the sovereignty, having concentrated in its hands all functions of sovereignty.2 Legal sanction was then given to this situation of factwhich, from the point of

view of the former State, is of course illegal, like every revolutionby the will of the Czechoslovak nation as possessor of the sovereignty. This State sovereignty, which constitutes the essential substance of a nation, and not the international treaties or the Treaties of Peace, was the source from which the Czechoslovak Republic became a State. The existence of this State as such does not depend on those treaties. They take for granted the existence in fact and in law of a State as contracting party. Their object was to give to the State access to the community of nations, to regulate the mutual relations between States already existing, oras is the case in the Peace Treatiesto...