Modern self-determination law and the fourth option: International and United States Law

Article Sidebar

PDF (Español (España))

Published: Mar 14, 2021
Issue: Vol. 3 (2010): ACDI
Section Papers


Main Article Content

Authors

Javier J. Rúa-Jovet University of Puerto Rico School of Law
Abstract

Under International and U.S. Constitutional Law decolonization is achieved solely via independence, full integration, and freely associated independence”. UN Resolutions 1514 and 1541 (1960) and supposed Constitutional constraints are the oft-cited authoritative statements for this widely held, yet false proposition. Res. 2625 (1970) amended Res. 1541 by adding a fourth decolonization route: “The emergence into any other political status freely determined by a people”. This modern self-determination option is explained in detail in the monograph, including its pragmatic, case-by-case non-dogmatic approach.

As constitutional law goes, there are already various non-state sovereigns within the Federal Union. Indian tribes are jurisprudentially describes as “distinct, independent political communities” or “dependent sovereigns” The Commonwealths of Puerto Rico and the Northern Mariana Islands, among others, are also examples of federated non-state sovereigns peoples and  jurisdictions with varying degrees of autonomy, that fit the norms espoused in Res. 2625 and its progeny.

How to Cite
Rúa-Jovet, J. J. (2021). Modern self-determination law and the fourth option: International and United States Law. ACDI - Anuario Colombiano De Derecho Internacional, 3, 89–122. Retrieved from https://revistas.urosario.edu.co/index.php/acdi/article/view/1425
References

Multilateral treaties

Statute of the International Court of Justice, art. 38 §1(b) Stat. I.C.J., 76 Y.B.U.N. 1052.

International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, 16 Dec. 1966, 999, U.N.T.S. 171.

International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, 16 Dec. 1966, 993 U.N.T.S. 3.

International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, G.A. Res. 2106 A (XX), 660 U.N.T.S. 195 (1969).

Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties, UN Doc. A/CONF.39/27 (1969), 1155 U.N.T.S. 331.

UN Security Council Resolutions and related instruments

Trusteeship Council Resolution 2183 (LIII), S/18124 (1986) Entry into force of new status agreements, termination of Trusteeship Agreement.

Security Council Resolution 683, S/RES/683 (1990) Entry into force of new status agreements for Federated States of Micronesia, the Marshall Islands and the Northern Mariana Islands, thus ending the Trusteeship.

Security Council Resolution 1244, S/Res/1244 (1999) Authorizing international civil and military presence in Kosovo and established the United Nations Interim Administration Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK).

UN General Assembly and regional resolutions

Universal Declaration of Human Rights, G.A. Res. 217 A (III) (1948). Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples, G.A. Res. 1514 (XV), 15 UN GAOR, 15th Sess., Supp. Nº 16, UN Doc. A/4684 (1960).

Principles which should guide Members in determining whether or not an obligation exists to transmit the information called for under article 73 e of the Charter, G.A. Res. 1541 (XV), UN GAOR, 15th Sess., Supp. Nº 16 at 29, UN Doc. A/4651 (1960).

Permanent sovereignty over natural resources, G.A. Res. 1803 (XVII), 17 UN GAOR Supp. (Nº 17) at 15, UN Doc. A/5217 (1962).

Declaration on Principles of International Law Concerning Friendly Relations and Cooperation among States in accordance with the Charter, G.A. Res. 2625 (XXV), UN GAOR, 25th Sess., Supp. Nº 28, at 121, UN Doc. A/8028 (1970).

Plan of the Action for the Full Implementation of the Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples, G.A. Res. 35/118, 11 December 1980.

Vienna Declaration and Program of Action, UN Doc. A/CONF. 157/23 (1993).

A/RES/50/133, Support by the United Nations System of the Efforts of Governments to Promote and Consolidate New or Restored Democracies.

A/RES/55/2, Millennium Declaration.

A/RES/61/34, Report of the International Law Commission on the work of its fifty-eighth session.

A/RES/61/39, The rule of law at the national and international levels.

A/RES/61/166, Promotion of equitable and mutually respectful dialogue on human rights.

A/RES/61/169, The right to development.

A/RES/63/165, The right of the Palestinian people to self-determination.

A/RES/63/189, Promotion of a democratic and equitable international order.

A/RES/3237, PLO Observer status.

A/RES/43/160, Designation of Palestine.

A/RES/43/177, Right to circulate communications without intermediary.

A/RES/52/250, Right to participate in general debate and additional rights.

A/RES/64/3, IOC observer status.

Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe, Final Act of Helsinki, 1 August 1975, 14 I.L.M. 1398.

Special Committee on Decolonization 4th Meeting, 6/06/2002, GA/COL/3064.

Final Washington DC Declaration of the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly and the Resolutions Adopted at the Fourteenth Annual Session (2005), Chapter III, Section 58.

International judicial decisions

Aaland Islands Case (1920) LNOJ Special Supp Nº 3.

Greco-Bulgarian “Communities”, advisory opinion Nº 17, 1930 P.C.I.J. (ser. B) Nº 30, at 21 (1930).

Fisheries Case (United Kingdom v. Norway), ICJ Reports 131 (1951).

Namibia, ICJ Reports 16 (1971).

Western Sahara, advisory opinion, ICJ Reports 32 (1975).

East Timor, ICJ Reports 90 (1995).

Accordance with International Law of the Unilateral Declaration of Independence by the Provisional Institutions of Self-Government of Kosovo, advisory opinion, ICJ Reports (22/07/2010).

Other international sources

Gros, Héctor. Implementation of United Nations resolutions relating to the right of peoples under colonial and alien domination to self-determination. A study prepared by a special rapporteur (1981), E/CN.4/Sub.2/405.

Secretariat of the International Commission of Jurists. The Events in East Pakistan, 8 International Commission of Jurists Review 44 (1972).

The implementation of the right to self-determination as a contribution to conflict prevention. Report of Unesco International Conference of Experts, Barcelona, November 1998.

Books and treatises

Anaya, James. Indigenous peoples in International Law (1996).

Berríos, Rubén et al. Puerto Rico. Nación independiente, imperativo del siglo XXI (2010).

Cassese, Antonio. Self-determination of peoples: a legal appraisal (1995).

Danspeckgruber, Wolfgang. The self-determination of peoples: community, nation and State in an interdependent world. 367 (2002).

Halperin, Morton; Scheffer, David & Small, Patricia. Self-determination in the new world order. 47 (1992).

Igarashi, Masahiro. Associated statehood in International Law (2002).

McWhinney, Edward. Self-determination of peoples and plural-ethnic states in contemporary International Law: failed States, nation-building and the alternative, federal option. 133 (2007).

Trías, José. Puerto Rico: the trials of the oldest colony in the world (1997).

Tribe, Laurence. American Constitutional Law (1988).

Articles

Anaya, James. A contemporary definition of the international norm of selfdetermination, 3 Transnat’l L. & Contemp. Probs. 131 (1993).

Bacon, Selden. How the tenth amendment affected the fifth article of the Constitution, 16 Va. L. Rev. 771 (1930).

Brauer, Jurgen & Haywood, Robert. Non-state sovereign entrepreneurs and nonterritorial sovereign organizations. United Nations University-World Institute for Development Economics Research (2010).

Corbin, Carlyle. Criteria for the cessation of transmission of information under article 73(e), Overseas Territories Report, V(5), August 2006.

Cox-Alomar, Rafael. Britain’s withdrawal from the Eastern Caribbean 1965- 1967: a reappraisal, The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, 31(3) at 74 (2003).

Daes, Erica-Irene. Striving for self-determination for indigenous peoples. In: In pursuit of the right of self-determination: collected papers and proceedings of the First International Conference on the Right to Self-Determination & the United Nations. Geneva 2000, at 50 (2001).

Duffy, Christina. United States: American expansion and territorial deannexation, 72 Chi. L. Rev. 797 (1993).

Evans, Alex; Jones, Bruce & Steven, David. Confronting the long crisis of globalization: risk resilience and the international order, Brookings/ CIC (2009).

Fletcher, Matthew. Preconstitutional federal power, 82 Tul. L. Rev. 509 (2007).

Hannum, Hurst. Rethinking self-determination, 34 Va. J. Int’l L. 10 (2005).

Hannum, Hurst & Lillich, Richard. The concept of autonomy in International Law, 74 AJIL 858 (1980).

Horey, Joseph. The right of self-government in the commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, 4 Asian-Pac L & Policy J 180 (2003).

Johnson. Toward self-determination - a reappraisal as reflected in the Declaration on Friendly Relations, 3 Georgia J.I.C.L. 149 (1973).

McElroy, Jerome & Pearce, Kara. The advantages of political affiliation: dependent and independent small island profiles, The Round Table, The Commonwealth Journal of International Affairs, 95(386), 529 (2006).

Noutcheva, Gergana; Tocci, Nathalie; Coppieters, Bruno; Kovziridze, Tamara; Emerson, Michael & Huysseune, Michel. Europeanization and secessionist conflicts: concepts and theories, Journal of Ethnopolitics and Minority Issues in Europe (2004).

Pellet, Alain. The opinions of the Badinter Arbitration Committee, a second breath for self-determination of peoples, 3 EJIL 178 (1992).

Sohn, Louis. The new International Law: protection of rights of individuals rather than States, 32 Am. U. L. Rev. 16 (1982).

Sullivan, Jake. The tenth amendment and local government, 112 Yale L.J. 1935 (2003).

Swaine, Edward. Negotiating federalism: State bargaining and the dormant treaty power, 9 Duke L.J. 1127 (2000).

Vogel, Howard. Reframing rights from the ground up: the contribution of the new law of self-determination to recovering the principle of sociability on the way to a relational theory of international human rights, 20 Temp. Intl & Comp. L.J. 443 (2006).

Williams, Paul & Jannotti, Francesca. Earned sovereignty: bridging the gap between sovereignty and self-determination, 40 Stan J. Int’l L. 347 (2004).

Other municipal sources (United States of America)

United States Declaration of Independence (1776).

Constitution of the United States of America (1787).

American Law Institute, 1 Restatement (Third) of the Foreign Relations Law of the United States 145 (1987).

Indian Self-Determination and Education Assistance Act (ISDEA), as amended, 25 U.S.C. 450, et seq.

DC House Voting Rights Act, H.R.157/S.160.

Municipal judicial decisions (United States of America)

Green v. Biddle, 21 U.S. (8 Wheat.) 1 (1823).

Poole v. Fleeger, 36 U.S. (11 Pet.) 185 (1837).

Holmes v. Jennison, 14 Pet. 540 (1840).

Virginia v. West Virginia, 78 U.S. 39 (1878).

Virginia v. Tennessee, 148 U.S. 503 (1893).

The Paquete Habana, 175 U.S. 677 (1900).

United States v. Curtiss-Wright Export Corp., 299 U.S. 304 (1936).

United Public Workers v. Mitchell, 330 U.S. 75 (1947).

Griswold v. Connecticut, 381 U.S. 479 (1965).

In re Winship, 397 U.S. 358 (1970).

Examining Board v. Flores de Otero, 426 U.S. 572 (1976).

United States Steel Corp. v. Multistate Tax Comm’n, 434 U.S. 452 (1978). United States v. Wheeler, 435 U.S. 313 (1978).

Washington v. Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation, 447 U.S. 134 (1980).

Filártiga v. Pena-Irala, 630 F.2d 876 (1980).

Merrion v. Jicarilla Apache Tribe, 455 U.S. 130 (1982).

Tel-Oren v. Libyan Arab Republic, 726 F.2d 774 (1984).

National Farmers Union Insurance v. Crow Tribe of Indians, 471 U.S. 845 (1985).

Dun & Bradstreet v. Greenmoss Builders, 472 U.S. 749 (1985).

Halliburton Co. v. Commissioner, 93 T.C. 758 (1989).

Continental Illinois Corp. v. Commissioner, 94 T.C. 165 (1990).

United States v. Verdugo-Urquidez, 494 U.S. 259 (1990).

Morgan Guaranty Trust Co. v. Republic of Palau, 924 F.2d 1237 (1991).

Alden v. Maine, 527 U.S. 706 (1999).

Ortiz-Feliciano v. Toledo-Davila, 175 F.3d 37, (1st Cir. 1999).

United States v. Yousef, 327 F.3d 56 (2003).

Yousef v. United States, 540 U.S. 933 (2005).

Kansas v. Marsh, 126 S. Ct. 2516 (2006).

Rodríguez v. P.R. Fed. Affairs Admin., 435 F.3d 378, 549 U.S. 812 (2006).

District of Columbia v. Heller, 128 S. Ct. 2783 (2008).

Boumediene v. Bush, 553 U.S. 723 (2008).

Query Statistics

Downloads

Download data is not yet available.
Publcation metrics

1322 1396




 

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Los autores conservan los derechos de autor y garantizan a la revista el derecho de ser la primera publicación del trabajo al igual que licenciado bajo una Creative Commons Attribution License que permite a otros compartir el trabajo con un reconocimiento de la autoría del trabajo y la publicación inicial en esta revista.

Similar Articles

<< < 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 > >> 

You may also start an advanced similarity search for this article.