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Dr James Irving

This course is available on the LLM (extended part-time), LLM (full-time), MSc in Human Rights and University of Pennsylvania Law School LLM Visiting Students. This course is available with permission as an outside option to students on other programmes where regulations permit.

Some prior knowledge of international law is useful but not essential.

This course has a limited number of places and demand is typically high. This may mean that you’re not able to get a place on this course.

This course will provide a general introduction to the doctrine of self-determination in international law. Self-determination will be historically contextualised from its intellectual progenitors in the Enlightenment through to its political birth at the 1919 Paris Peace Conference and its formal induction into international law by virtue of the 1945 UN Charter. Both the detail of the doctrine's content and the dynamic governing its development will be explored. The relationship between self-determination and state formation (including decolonisation and secession), minority rights, aboriginal rights, women's rights and the nascent right to democratic governance will be central topics. Reference will also be made to the interplay between self-determination and economic rights, including permanent sovereignty over natural resources, the right to development and the "third generation rights" movement more generally. Self-determination's influence upon the international rules governing the use of force will be discussed, but these rules will not be a primary focus. Upon completion of the course students will be in a position to legally analyse contemporary fact patterns and to identify both strengths and weaknesses in the existing legal framework. Students will have considered new and novel approaches to self-determination and will be able to situate the doctrine in relation to international law and human rights. Those taking the course will gain an appreciation for self-determination's particular contribution to political and economic liberty.

This course will comprise one two-hour seminar each week in Autumn Term, except in Week 6, which is a Reading Week.

Class exercises (which do not count towards the final assessment) will be set.