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