The High Court delivered an orthodox, letter-of-the-law ruling on the dual citizenship status of seven former and serving federal parliamentarians.
Only two - Nationals senator Matt Canavan and independent Nick Xenophon - escaped disqualification.
The other five were judged to be subjects of a foreign power and therefore constitutionally ineligible to nominate for parliament at the 2016 election.
"It's clearly a question of status," citizenship and constitutional law expert Kim Rubenstein told Sky News after Friday's decision.
"Then applying that, it was very simple to have a look to see who had the status of a citizen at the time of their nomination."
For Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce, it was pretty clear-cut.
He was told by a New Zealand high commission official that in the eyes of the NZ government he was a citizen by descent.
That was enough for the High Court to rule him out.
Senator Canavan, who has links to Italy through his maternal grandparents, was saved by the potential for Italian citizenship by descent to extend indefinitely.
The High Court decided that murkiness meant Senator Canavan would have had to take positive steps towards attaining Italian citizenship to be ruled ineligible, which he hadn't.
Senator Xenophon, who is quitting federal parliament to make a run for the South Australian state parliament, enjoyed a most unusual dual citizenship status.
Being a "British overseas citizen" due to his father being born in Cyprus, a former British possession, did not entail "any reciprocal obligation of allegiance to the UK".
The High Court's decision adhered closely to the principles of the 1992 Sykes v Cleary case, which sought to ensure members of parliament did not have split allegiances.
Professor Rubenstein believes it is time to remove section 44(i) from the constitution and use electoral laws to proscribe the types of conflict that disqualify people from running for parliament.
That's now something for a joint parliamentary committee to consider.
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