Settling Disputes Beyond the Nation State

The Hungarian-Romanian Optants Question was one of the most famous international lawsuits of the interwar period, and all the important political and judicial bodies of the League of Nations and its surroundings were involved in resolving it. The central question was whether Hungarian landowners from Transylvania who had opted for Hungarian citizenship should receive compensation from Romania for their property lost as a result of the agrarian reform. At an international level, this dispute raised questions of jurisdiction, i.e. which bodies and institutions were authorized to make political decisions or administer legal justice in this case, and which norms should be applied. Settling Disputes Beyond the Nation State uses the Optants Question as a case study for analyzing the political, legal and socio-economic consequences of the new state order in East Central Europe after the First World War. This involved important problems of state succession like citizenship and property rights across borders. The volume highlights both the complexity of the conflicts between the victors and the vanquished in post-war Europe and the ingenuity of the international community in resolving the disputes. Beyond this level of diplomatic negotiations and transnational litigation, insights into individual and family strategies for coping with the economic and social consequences of the agrarian reform are offered as well as into the administrative and professional processes set in motion by the Optants Question. The volume is the first comprehensive analysis of the topic with contributions from Romania, Hungary, Germany and other European countries.