1st Edition

Constitutional Law and Politics of Secession

Edited By Antoni Abat i Ninet Copyright 2024
    384 Pages 4 B/W Illustrations
    by Routledge

    This collection presents an analysis of the concept of secession and its constitutional accommodation alongside an assessment of the effects of secession in constitutional and international law. The work proposes a new approach and insights into the existing literature that fill a gap from multidisciplinary and transdisciplinary perspectives.

    The book approaches the topics of secession, constitutionalism, and their relationship from both theoretical and empirical perspectives, including the analysis of particular secessionist examples, such as Catalonia, the Basque Country, Tigray, the Palestinian minority in Israel, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and the Mapuche Nation, from a comparative constitutional perspective. Elucidating these issues from different methodological and conceptual perspectives produces novelties in the scientific and constitutional debate. The interplay between constitutions, constitutional law, and secession is indeed explored from philosophical, socio-legal, but also from strict constitutional law outlooks.

    Written by constitutional and public international law experts, the book will be of interest to students, academics, and researchers working in the areas of constitutional law, legal theory, theory of the state, philosophy of law, and political science.

    List of figures

    List of contributors

    Introduction

    PART I

    Epistemological construction

    1 Life and death of states: Secession as birth and not suicide: De-transcendentalizing a political taboo

    ANTONI ABAT I NINET

    2 Secession and its cognition: Conceptual distinctions and the patterns of legal imagination

    ZORAN OKLOPCIC

    3 Loyalty and disloyalty to the constitution: Meditations on 1776, 1861, and 2022

    SANFORD LEVINSON

    PART II

    Constitutional Accommodation of secession

    4 Taming the beast: On constituent power and secession

    GIUSEPPE MARTINICO

    5 A procedural model of constitutionalized secession revisited

    MIODRAG JOVANOVIĆ

    6 Secession, policy autonomy, and recognition

    MARK TUSHNET

    7 The theory and practice of self-determination in multinational democracies: A systematic comparison

    FÉLIX MATHIEU & DAVE GUÉNETTE

    8 Indigenous claims and the Chilean 2022 Draft Constitution in light of the secession paradigm

    NATALIA MORALES CERDA & FRANCISCA POU GIMÉNEZ

    PART III

    Federalism, autonomy, and secession

    9 Constitutional law, federalism, and secession

    ERIKA ARBAN

    10 Multilevel constitutionalism and diversity: Prospects for secession in Bosnia and Herzegovina?

    MAJA SAHADŽIĆ

    11 Non-territorial autonomy, not secession: The Palestinian- Arab minority in the Israeli Jewish-democratic state

    HILLY MOODRICK-EVEN KHEN

    PART IV

    International regulation and mediation of secession

    12 Building bridges: A Janus-faced secession

    JOSÉ ALBERTO AZEREDO LOPES AND CATARINA SANTOS BOTELHO

    13 Catalonia: The right to self-determination and the consent of the governed

    HÉCTOR LÓPEZ BOFILL

    14 The regulation of secession

    PAU BOSSACOMA BUSQUETS

    15 Tigray and the (un)conditional right to self-determination, including the right to secession: Constitutional and international law perspective

    MIHRETEAB T. TAYE

    Index

    Biography

    Antoni Abat i Ninet is Maria Zambrano Researcher at Institut d’Estudis Europeus, UAB, Barcelona and Visiting Professor of Constitutional Law and Legal Theory at the Faculty of Law, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel.