The Right to be Taken Seriously: Self-Determination in International Law

This article suggests that viewing the right to self-determination as an enforceable right possibly leading up to secession is no longer tenable, if it ever was. Instead, courts and quasi-judicial tribunals have reconceptualized self-determination as a legal principle rather than a right and have severed the connection with secession. Hence, this article argues that self-determination has been turned into a procedural norm; and this reconceptualization can be defended in terms of republican political theory.