Re Julio R Martínez

• Jurisdicción: Argentina
• Número de expediente: Case No. 146
• Fecha: 07 Abril 1919
• Emisor: Federal Court of First Instance (Argentina)

Argentina, Federal District Court.

(Saul Escobar, Judge.)

Case No. 146

In re Julio R. Martínez.

Nationality — Expatriation — Argentine Law — Loss of Nationality and Loss of Political Rights — Naturalisation.

The Facts.—Martínez was an Argentine by birth. He obtained naturalisation papers in Uruguay in 1915. He now came before the Court seeking to become restored to his status as an Argentine.

Held: That the petition must be refused, since it was not within the jurisdiction of the Court to act in such a situation. Law 346 declared that those naturalised in foreign countries could not exercise political rights in Argentina, and that only Congress could restore their rights to those who had lost the exercise of citizenship. The Court could not restore to him his political rights. According to Argentine law, he had never lost his character of an Argentine national, although he was deprived of political rights by naturalisation abroad. “It is not possible to restore the petitioner to his status as an Argentine, since he has continued to be one.” This decision was largely based on Zeballos and Alcorta, whom the Court quoted: “In the Republic, the vassalage [of citizenship] is perpetual. Argentine nationality is never lost, even though political rights can be lost.”1

¹ Amancio Alcorta, Curso de Derecho International Privado (1887), vol. I, p. 406. See on this point the case of Ernesto Lapping, Jurisprudencia Argentina, vol. 6, p. 398, for a decision of the Cámara Federal de la Capital (23 May, 1921), holding that a naturalised...