Diversity and Self-Determination in International Law

by Karen Knop

Overview

When does international law give a group the right to choose its sovereignty? In an original perspective on this familiar question, Knop analyzes the ways that many of the groups that the right of self-determination most affects—including colonies, ethnic nations, indigenous peoples and women—have been marginalized in its interpretation. Her analysis also reveals that key cases have grappled with this problem of diversity. Challenges by marginalized groups to the culture or gender biases of international law emerge as integral to the cases, as do attempts to meet these challenges.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780521067409
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	06/26/2008
Series:	Cambridge Studies in International and Comparative Law , #20
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	460
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.30(d)

About the Author

KAREN KNOP is Associate Professor of Law in the Faculty of Law, University of Toronto, where she teaches international law and issues of self-determination in international law. She is editor, with Sylvia Ostry, Richard Simeon and Katherine Swinton of Re-Thinking Federalism: Citizens, Markets and Governments in a Changing World (1995).

Table of Contents

Part I. Cold War International Legal Literature: 1. The question of norm-type; 2. Interpretation and identity; 3. Pandemonium, interpretation and participation; Part II. Self-determination interpreted in practice: the challenge of culture: 4. The canon of self-determination; 5. Developing texts; Part III. Self-Determination Interpreted in Practice: The Challenge of Gender: 6. Women and self-determination in Europe after World War I; 7. Women and self-determination in United Nations trust territories; 8. Indigenous women and self-determination; Conclusion.

Editorial Reviews

"As discrete analytical units, her chapters shine, illuminating how the use and application of self-determination cannot be divorced from conceptions of the marginalized claimants. ...these specific discussions are so insightful that the reader is left wondering about their more general implications." The American Journal of International Law

From the Publisher