Self-Determination in the International Legal System

Tom Sparks is Senior Research Fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law, Germany.

1. A Struggle for Self-Determination: Whose Claim, to What Right?
I. Introduction
II. The Self-Determination Problem
III. Four Forms of Self-Determination
IV. Vocabulary and Categorisation: The Forms of Self-Determination and their Interrelation
V. Conclusion
2. Self-Determination’s Origins: 1320–1920
I. A Prehistory of Self-Determination?
II. Self-Determination Takes Centre Stage: 1776 and 1789
III. The Age of Revolution and the Long Nineteenth Century – 1789–1920
IV. Conclusion
3. Self-Determination and Decolonisation: 1920–1970
I. Imperialism and Decolonisation
II. First World War Rhetoric: Lenin and Wilson on Self-Determination
III. The Mandates System
IV. The United Nations and the Trusteeship System
V. Self-Determination in the Law of the United Nations
VI. Conclusion
4. Judicial Treatments of Self-Determination 1945–2004
I. Courts and Self-Determination
II. Advisory Opinion on Namibia (South West Africa)
III. The Western Sahara Advisory Opinion
IV. Badinter Arbitration Commission
V. East Timor
VI. Katangese Peoples’ Congress v Zaire
VII. Reference Re Secession of Quebec
VIII. The Wall Advisory Opinion
IX. Conclusion
5. The Kosovo Advisory Opinion
I. The Advisory Opinion
II. The Court’s Decision
III. Kosovo Applied: Russian Rhetoric and the Invasions of Ukraine
IV. Conclusion
6. The Chagos Archipelago Advisory Opinion
I. The Advisory Opinion
II. Self-Determination in the Chagos Advisory Opinion
III. Disambiguation: A Continuing Failure of Definition
IV. Conclusion
7. Interregnum