INTRODUCTION

It is a paradox that among controversial and uncertain fields of modern international law, few seem more controversial or less certain than self-determination; that the problem of self-determination has been central to the history – and to a lesser but still significant extent the jurisprudence – of the International Court; yet that so little has been written directly about the contribution of the Court to this field.

The distinction between the history and the jurisprudence of the Court is apposite. Important pronouncements of the Court on a wide variety of issues occurred in cases that directly or indirectly involved the processes of colonization and decolonization. This is true of decisions in the procedural field – for example, the impact of the dissolution of the League of Nations on substantive obligations and on jurisdictional clauses, mootness, the procedural issues arising from third party status. But it is also true in many areas of substantive law, as witness decisions on the competence of United Nations bodies, on the binding effect of decisions of the Security Council, on the status of African territories and peoples in the nineteenth century, to give only some examples.

Other, perhaps even more important, principles derive from cases occasioned by decolonization or its immediate aftermath – for example, the ‘objective’ legal personality of the UN, and its implied powers in the field of peacekeeping.

But the work of the Court in the field of self-determination and decolonization has not been merely the occasion for international law on other topics.