Green, Alexander Giles; (2019) A Moral Explanation of Emerging Statehood: Political Community and International Law. Doctoral thesis (Ph.D), UCL (University College London).

Abstract

This thesis develops the first ‘non-positivist’ account of the international laws that govern the emergence of new states. It asks what international legal principles condition the emergence of statehood and, as a necessarily connected matter, what moral reasons find expression in those principles. As such, it aims both to identify the content of the law and to establish the presumptive justifiability of that content. On the methodology adopted, these are not distinct issues but two aspects of the same explanatory exercise. The originality of this thesis turns, in part, upon this distinct methodology, which is innovative within this area of international legal scholarship. Substantively, this thesis argues against explanations of emerging statehood that place primary emphasis upon the importance of international stability or governmental legitimacy. Instead, it advances a novel conception of ‘political community’, which it uses to identify and justify four ‘antecedents’ of statehood and four ‘principles of emergence’, arguing that these legal elements collectively constitute the law that governs the emergence of new states. This substantive position articulates an original moral foundation for the relevant aspects of international law, whilst simultaneously entailing legal conclusions that challenge and extend more orthodox views of that law’s content.

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