The making of difference in international law, interpretation, identity and participation in the discourse of self-determination

grantor: University of TorontoThis thesis takes a narrow question--whether the right of self-determination of peoples in international law includes a right of secession--and uses it to open a window onto the broader problem posed by cultural and gender difference for the interpretation of international law. The thesis does not seek to determine whether a right of secession exists. Rather, it investigates the importance of this question as a place, perhaps without equal, where international law has had to contend with the challenge of diversity for interpretation. To illuminate this importance of self-determination, the thesis analyses its interpretation as the expression of a changing relationship between interpretation, identity and participation in international law. By approaching the international legal literature in this way, Part I of the thesis offers a richer and more precise understanding of the current scholarly controversy over a right to secede. In similarly enhancing the understanding of the precedents that figure in the controversy, Parts II and III enrich the history of the interpretation of self-determination. The judgments, arbitral decisions and other authoritative texts of self-determination assume importance less as stepping stones in the development of the right and more as successive encounters with marginalized groups, from nomadic desert peoples to indigenous women. In presenting an alternative account of self-determination as a series of challenges from the margins, Parts II and III introduce and develop the critiques of cultural and gender biases, respectively, that emerged in these challenges. At the same time, Parts II and III suggest that international law and international institutions have responded to these cultural and gender critiques, if in 'ad hoc' and partial fashion. The response is most visible in the interpretation of the "self" and the right of self-determination. But Parts II and III also explore the possibility of a deeper change in interpretation, one shaped by the values of identity and participation.S.J.D