Abstract
Two hundred years ago, in the wake of the modern world’s first great republican revolutions in France and the United States of America, Immanuel Kant endorsed a federation of independent republics as the only valid basis of international law.1 Kant’s proposed republican federation echoed the new federal Constitution of the United States, which guaranteed a “republican form of government” to every state in the Union.2 Enlightened scholars supposed that if ever some powerful people could form a republic, republican principles would become the basis of a just world order.3 So republican ideas permeated and inspired the developing ius gentium,4 and several new states emerged to embrace the republican form of government. Republicanism, liberalism, and modern international law emerged together from Europe’s belated turn to reason as the basis of law and authority, and share the same enlightened premisses of liberty, equality and popular sovereignty that justified the eighteenth-century revolutions. These principles remain the actual basis and only justifiable foundation of international law today. International law depends on republican principles for its content and moral validity, and supposed international laws and institutions bind and should influence republican governments only to the extent that they reflect republican procedures of politics and legislation.5
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Notes
There is a vast recent literature applying Kant’s theories to modern international law: writings which usually do not enquire too closely into the meaning of the word “republican.” See for example, Cecilia Lynch, “Kant, the Republican Peace, and Moral Guidance in International Law,” 8 Ethics and International Affairs 39 (1994); Fernando R. Tesón, “The Kantian Theory of International Law,” 92 Columbia Law Review 53 (1992); Michael Doyle, “Kant, Liberal Legacies and Foreign Affairs,” 12 Philosophy and Public Affairs 205, 323 (1993). On the “Kantian Tradition” in international law, see David R. Mapel and Terry Nardin, “Convergence and Divergence in International Ethics” in Nardin and Mapel (eds), Traditions of lnternational Ethics, Cambridge University Press. Cambridge, 1992, pp. 297–322. For a non-Kantian discussion of republicanism in International Law. See Onuf, supra n. 4.
For a broad overview of the republican legal tradition, see M.N.S. Sellers, The Sacred Fire of Liberty. Macmillan. Basingstoke, England, 1998. For bibliographies and (somewhat jaundiced) discussions of recent republican scholarship, see Daniel T. Rodgers, “Republicanism: The Career of a Concept,” 79 Journal of American History 11 (1992); G. Edward White, “Reflections on the ‘Republican Revival’: Interdisciplinary Scholarship in the Legal Academy,” 6 Yale Journal of Law and the Humanities 1 (1994).
See, for example, “Publius” [James Madison], The Federalist X, at 126 in Isaac Kramnick (ed.), The Federalist Papers. Penguin. London, 1987: “A republic…[is] a government in which a scheme of representation takes place,” so that “the public voice, pronounced by the representatives of the people, will be more consonant to the public good than if pronounced by the people themselves.” Cf. Montesquieu, who also considered the structure of the suffrage as fundamental in a republic. Charles de Secondat, baron de la Brède et de Montesquieu, De l’esprit des lois, bk II, ch. 2 (1748).
Most influentially, see John Rawls, “The Law of Peoples” in Stephen Shute and Susan Hurley (eds.), On Human Rights: The Oxford Amnesty Lectures 1993, Basic Books. New York, 1993. 41. Cf.
John Rawls, Political Liberalism. Columbia University Press. New York, 1993.
For the origins of the concept of self-determination, see Alfred Cobban, The Nation State and National Self-Determination. Thomas Y. Crowell. New York, 1969;
Michla Pomerance, Self-Determination in Law and Practice. Martinus Nijhoff. The Hague, 1982;
Dov Ronen, The Quest for Self-Determination. Yale University Press, New Haven, 1979;
A. Rigo Sureda, The Evolution of the Right of Seif-Determination. A.W. Sijthoff. Leiden, 1973.
“Das Recht der Menschen muss heilig gehalten werden, der herrschenden Gewalt mag es auch noch so grosse Aufopferung Kosten.” Id. at 49. Cf. Eugene Kamenka, “Human Rights, Peoples Rights,” in J. Crawford (ed.), in The Rights of Peoples. Clarendon Press. Oxford, 1988, at p. 129 for the republican sources of modern rights discourse in Commonwealth England, France, and the United States of America. Kamenka rightly notes that all “liberal democracy” grew out of the republican tradition.
For discussions of the modern concept of self-determination, see Hurst Hannum, Autonomy, Sovereignty and Self-Determination: The Accomodation of Conflicting Rights. University of Pennsylvania Press. Philadelphia, 1990; Michla Pomerance, Self-Determination in Law and Practice, supra n. 24, at I; Thomas M. Franck, “The Emerging Right to Democratic Governance,” in 86 American Journal of International Law 46 (1992); “Postmodern Tribalism and the Right to Secession” in
Broelmann Catherine, Lefeber Rene and Zieck Marjoleine (eds), Peoples and Minorities in International Law. Kluwer. Dodrecht, 1992. Lea Brilmayer, “Secession and Self-Determination: A Territorial Interpretation,” in 16 Yale Journal of International Law 177 (1991); Frederic L. Kirgis, Jr., “The Degrees of Self-Determination in the United Nations Era,” in 88 American Journal of International Law 304–310 (1994).
Example, Ian Brownlie, Principles of Public International Law. 3rd edn, Oxford University Press. Oxford, 1979. Ch. 13: “Sovereignty and Equality of States.”
Henry Wheaton, Elements of International Law. Richard Henry Dana, Jr., 8th edn, Little Brown. Boxton, 1866. Part II, §§ 65–66.
See, for example, F. Von Savigny, Vom Beruf unserer Zeit fir Gesetzgebung und Rechtswissenschaft. Mohr und Zimmer. Heildelberg, 1814; Richard Rorty, Contingency, Irony and Solidarity. Cambridge University Press. Cambridge, 1989.
See, for example, Amy Gutmann (ed.), Multiculturalism. 2nd edn, Princeton University Press. Princeton, 1994;
Will Kymlicka, Liberalism, Community and Culture. Clarendon Press. Oxford, 1989.
See, for example, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Pandaemonium: Ethnicity in International Politics. Oxford University Press. New York, 1993.
See M.N.S. Sellers, American Republicanism. Macmillan. Basingstoke, England, 1994 for the traditional desiderata of republican government.
Most critics of the nation-state fear its unifying force in the hands of tyrants. Even Jürgen Habermas, who sees the importance of nationalism in Europe’s emerging republican sensibility and the value of common identity in protecting universal human rights, does not understand how weak civic bonds will be without a national identity to support them. See Jürgen Habermas, “The European Nation State-its Achievement and its Limits: On the Past and Future of Sovereignty and Citizenship,” in Challenges To Law at the End of the 20 th Century. Papers and Abstracts of the 17th IVR World Congress 27 (1995).
Charles Taylor, The Ethics of Authenticity. Harvard University Press. Cambridge, 1991;
Alasdair Maclntyre, After Virtue: Whose Justice? Which Rationality? University of Notre Dame Press. Notre Dame, 1988.
Charlton T. Lewis and Charles Short, A Latin Dictionary, s.v. “Natio” 1189 (1879).
For an interesting attempt to define the Rights of Peoples, see, The Universal Declaration of the Rights of Peoples (“Algiers Declaration”) (1976) in International Lelio Basso Foundation for the Rights and Liberties of Peoples, Universal Declaration of the Rights of Peoples. François Maspero (Paris, 1977), art. 5, partially reprinted in J. Crawford, ed. The Rights Of Peoples supra n. 34 at pp. 187–189. See also n. 134 below. For documents on autonomy and minority rights, see Hurst Hannum (ed.), Documents On Autonomy and Minority Rights. M. Nijhoff. Boston, 1993.
For a lucid expression of these principles see The Universal Declaration of the Rights of Peoples (1976), with text and commentary in Antonio Cassese, “Political Self-Determination-Oid Concepts and New Developments,” in Antonio Cassese(ed.), UN Law: Fundamental Rights. Brill. Leiden, 1979 at p. 137.
Id. For modem recognition of this fundamental aspect of the Law of Nations see for example, Hannum, supra n. 39 at 470–74; Bucheit, supra n. 131, at 94; Ved P. Nanda “Self-Determination Outside the Colonial Context: The Birth of Bangladesh in Retrospect” in Yonah Alexander and Robert A. Friedlander (eds.), Self-Determination: National, Regional, and Global Dimensions. Westview. Boulder, Colarado, 1980 at 204; Cobban supra n. 24, at 140.
See Neal Wood, Cicero’s Social and Political Thought. University of California Press. Berkeley, 1988 at 126–127, 137–146, 165–166, 169. Cf. Broom’s Legal Maxims. T. and J.W. Johnson. Philadelphia, 1845; Maxim I: “Salus Populi Suprema Lex,” with citations to Grotius, De Jure Belli ac Pacis, III.20.7.1 and Montesquieu, Esprit des lois, L.xxvii. 23.
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© 2006 Mortimer N. S. Sellers
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Sellers, M.N.S. (2006). Republican Principles in International Law. In: Republican Principles in International Law. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230505292_2
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