Self-Determination
In: American journal of international law: AJIL, Band 65, Heft 3, S. 459-475
ISSN: 2161-7953
Any examination of self-determination runs promptly into the difficulty
that while the concept lends itself to simple formulation in words which
have a ring of universal applicability and perhaps of revolutionary slogans,
when the time comes to put it into operation it turns out to be a complex
matter hedged in by limitations and caveats. In a different turn of phrase,
what is stated in big print—as in the reiterated United Nations injunction:
All peoples have the right to self-determination—is drastically modified by
what follows in small print. Indeed, once the major original exercise of
self-determination has been undertaken, the small print takes over and
becomes the big print which establishes the new and far more restrictive
guidelines.