self-determination as the first right was to insist on its independence and its inviolability. The significance of this claim should not be underestimated. Delinking sovereignty from preconditions such as the standard of civilization in the 19th century and the discourse of development in the 20th century constituted a revolution in how membership in international society was imagined. As Robert Jackson has argued, this entailed a novel framework for international politics in which self-determination constituted a imperative” that allowed “categorical all former colonies to achieve sovereignty. For the first time, the recognition of formal sovereignty was detached from an evaluation of the characteristics and attributes of the state in question. This universalization of self-determination implied that in so far as their place in international society was concerned, all political communities were equal. They could no longer be ranked hierarchically according to political and economic conditions. Thus while earlier iterations of the concept of entailed an evaluation of society’s level of civilization or developed and plotted as culminating project of development, in positing self-determination as a right and a imperative,’ anti-colonialists sought to overturn a long standing understanding of ‘categorical independence and membership in international society. Thus far, I have argued that the anti-colonial reclassification of the self-determination from a principle to a right and its redefinition as the first right establishes the priority or primacy of in two ways. First, self-determination was understood to be prior to other rights in the sense that political autonomy and self-government were necessary preconditions for the recognition and protection of other rights. Second, the right of self-determination was primary in the sense that it could not be said to depend on evaluations of a sociological kind. The transformation of to a right now codified in the Covenants on Human Rights and restated in the 1960 Resolution 1514 had one more significance. Rights, unlike principles, created obligations on states and created an opportunity to refashion international organizations as enforcers of rights.
self-determination as the first right was to insist on its independence and its inviolability. The significance of this claim should not be underestimated. Delinking sovereignty from preconditions such as the standard of civilization in the 19th century and the discourse of development in the 20th century constituted a revolution in how membership in international society was imagined. As Robert Jackson has argued, this entailed a novel framework for international politics in which self-determination constituted a “categorical imperative” that allowed all former colonies to achieve sovereignty. For the first time, the recognition of formal sovereignty was detached from an evaluation of the characteristics and attributes of the state in question. This universalization of self-determination implied that in so far as their place in international society was concerned, all political communities were equal. They could no longer be ranked hierarchically according to political and economic conditions. Thus while earlier iterations of the concept of entailed an evaluation of society’s level of civilization or developed and plotted as culminating project of development, in positing self-determination as a right and a ‘categorical imperative,’ anti-colonialists sought to overturn a long standing understanding of independence and membership in international society. Thus far, I have argued that the anti-colonial reclassification of the self-determination from a principle to a right and its redefinition as the first right establishes the priority or primacy of in two ways. First, self-determination was understood to be prior to other rights in the sense that political autonomy and self-government were necessary preconditions for the recognition and protection of other rights. Second, the right of self-determination was primary in the sense that it could not be said to depend on evaluations of a sociological kind. The transformation of to a right now codified in the Covenants on Human Rights and restated in the 1960 Resolution 1514 had one more significance. Rights, unlike principles, created obligations on states and created an opportunity to refashion international organizations as enforcers of rights.
Slavery%20and%20Self-Determination.docx