Two Faces of Self-determination in Political Divorce
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Han Liu
Abstract
For decades, international law has denied the right to secede even if it enshrines self-determination. Existing scholarship explains this contradiction by opposing the right to self-determination and the principle of territorial integrity: self-determination itself does not justify a valid claim to the disputed territory. This article, against conventional wisdom, argues that the opposition is superficial. The real problem lies within the notion of self-determination itself. Self-determination contains within it two opposite faces: one breeds separatist movements; the other supports unification and territorial sovereignty. Historically, self-determination grounded both union and separation in the rise of the nation-state; secessionist self-determination only came into play when epochal wars had weakened the sovereignty of the parent state. Conceptually, the ambiguity of self-determination makes defining the ‘self’ a daunting task for the law, especially when both the parent state and the seceding group make national claims.
© 2017 by Walter de Gruyter Berlin/Boston
Artikel in diesem Heft
- Titelei
- Table of Contents
- Articles
- Two Faces of Self-determination in Political Divorce
- Notes & Essays
- Towards the Establishment of an International Constitutional Court
- Constitutionality of the Agreement between the Foreign Affairs Ministers of the Republic of Korea and Japan on the Issue of ‘Comfort Women’ on 28 December 2015
- All Voters are Equal but...
- Developments Austria
- Special Topic: Establishment and Unconstitutionality of Political Parties
- Developments CEE
- Special Topic: Procedural Rules and Practices Grounding the Decisions of the Constitutional Court of Romania
- Georgian Constitutional Court: The System of Legal Capacity of Natural Persons and its Impact upon the Georgian Legislation
Artikel in diesem Heft
- Titelei
- Table of Contents
- Articles
- Two Faces of Self-determination in Political Divorce
- Notes & Essays
- Towards the Establishment of an International Constitutional Court
- Constitutionality of the Agreement between the Foreign Affairs Ministers of the Republic of Korea and Japan on the Issue of ‘Comfort Women’ on 28 December 2015
- All Voters are Equal but...
- Developments Austria
- Special Topic: Establishment and Unconstitutionality of Political Parties
- Developments CEE
- Special Topic: Procedural Rules and Practices Grounding the Decisions of the Constitutional Court of Romania
- Georgian Constitutional Court: The System of Legal Capacity of Natural Persons and its Impact upon the Georgian Legislation
