Self-Determination, Human Rights, and the Nation-State: Revisiting Group Claims through a Complex Nexus in International Law

Pentassuglia, G (2017) Self-Determination, Human Rights, and the Nation-State: Revisiting Group Claims through a Complex Nexus in International Law. International Community Law Review, 2017/1. ISSN 1388-9036

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Abstract

In this article I examine selective dimensions of the nexus among the right to self-determination, human rights, and the ‘nation-state’ as they relate to claims made by certain ethno-cultural minority groups. I first discuss some conceptual extensions of ‘national’ claims and their underlying relation to international law and state sovereignty. Then, I critique elements of ‘national’ self-determination that are supposedly constitutive of the law of self-determination, including arguments about sub-national groups as ‘peoples’, and discuss some alternative approaches to the role of international law vis-à-vis this sort of claims. Finally, I argue that international human rights law can offer a synthesis of the above nexus insofar as it works, not so much as a platform for accepting or rejecting seemingly ‘absolute’ rights or solely enabling legal-institutional ad hocism, but rather as a general process-based framework for assessing group-related pathologies that are (directly or indirectly) of international law’s own making.

Item Type:	Article
Uncontrolled Keywords:	1801 Law
Subjects:	K Law > K Law (General)
Divisions:	Law
Publisher:	Brill Academic Publishers
Date of acceptance:	1 February 2017
Date of first compliant Open Access:	25 February 2022
Date Deposited:	25 Feb 2022 13:01
Last Modified:	25 Feb 2022 13:15
DOI or ID number:	10.1163/18719732-12340007
URI:	https://ljmu-9.eprints-hosting.org/id/eprint/16331

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