"She consents implicitly": Women's Citizenship, Marriage, and Liberal Political Theory in Late-Nineteenth and Early-Twentieth-Century Argentina

Abstract

Through Argentine Supreme Court cases, this article focuses on legal constructs of women's citizenship and identity in Argentina in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Although the Supreme Court consistently denied having done so, its jurisprudence created dependent citizenship for married Argentine women, conflating a wife's identity with that of her spouse in both domicile and nationality cases. Using concepts of consent, knowledge, and obligation found in liberal political theory, judges and legal scholars justified a married woman's dependent citizenship as the reasonable consequence of her own independent choice. Yet the law--not a woman's choice--expatriated her. The Supreme Court's conception of a unified marital identity subsumed a married woman's nationality under her husband's citizenship and reinforced her legal subordination to him. She was, at the same moment, both Argentine and not Argentine, depending on the particular issue at hand and her husband's national status.

Reality or pretense? Renouncing nationality and organized hypocrisy of the sovereignty of Taiwan

“…However, historically, the nationality of women who marry foreigners poses a violation of the fundamental value of free will and potentially leads to statelessness (Augustine-Adams, 2002; Scott, 1929; Studer, 2001). In the past, women who marry foreigners lost their original nationality and adopted the nationality of their husbands.…”

“…In the past, women who marry foreigners lost their original nationality and adopted the nationality of their husbands. This so-called ‘marriage rule’ can be found in the ruling of an Argentinian Court in 1897 stipulating that ‘When a woman marries a foreigner, she knows that, by her marriage, she becomes a foreigner, and she consents implicitly in the renunciation of her nationality and the acquisition of her husband’s’ (emphasis added) (Augustine-Adams, 2002: 19). The deprivation of her original nationality is a consequence for her ‘defection’ from her origin nation (Epstein, 1978: 106), while adopting the husband’s nationality is upheld on the ‘principle of family unity,’ which is mainly to ensure patrilineal genealogy, regarded as the foundation of national belonging (De Hart, 2006a, 2006b).…”

Imperiled Femininity: The Dismembering of Citizenship in Northern Mexico

“…Similarly, a woman who married a Mexican citizen became naturalized. It was understood that through her consent to marriage a woman implicitly consented to the change in citizenship (Augustine‐Adams, ). The justification of this legal framework was premised on the “nature of marriage,” in which the husband was the head of the family and a wife's independent citizenship would destroy “family unity” (Vallarta cited in Augustine‐Adams, :29).…”

“…This construct was prevalent throughout Europe from the 19th until the early 20th century and persisted in Mexico, despite numerous changes in the legal codes, until a series of legal challenges in the 1950s finally abolished it (Karlsson 2005;Augustine-Adams 2006). Under dependent citizenship, a wife's citizenship followed that of her husband.…”

Wedding Ceremony, Religion, and Tradition: The Shertok Family Debate, 1922

“…Through a marriage ceremony, it is possible to fashion a national identity and to create social solidarity (Augustine-Adams 2002;Carter 2008;Edgar 2007). Moreover, in Judaism, the religious wedding rite creates a symbolic link between the individual and national solidarity and thereby counteracts the ostensible danger with which the marrying couple 'threatens' the collective (Adar-Bunis 2007: 149).…”