Alex Green on Successful State Secession and the Value of International Recognition (forthcoming book chapter)

"Successful Secession and the Value of International Recognition"
Alex Green
in Vidmar and Raible (eds), Research Handbook on Secession (Edward Elgar, forthcoming 2020)

Abstract: There is a strong positive correlation between secession movements that receive international recognition and those that successfully result in independent states. This chapter asks whether the seeming potency of recognition can be justified, or whether there can be nothing said for it, morally speaking. In so doing it critiques and dismisses putative justifications based on the values of democracy, distributive justice, and international stability, before advancing an alternative and more promising possibility: that formal recognition is conducive to the development of ethically valuable politics. This alternative is argued not only to justify the seeming influence that recognition enjoys over attempted secession, but also the liberty to refuse recognition enjoyed by established states under international law, as well as the duty of such states to engage in collective non-recognition under particular circumstances.  Click here to download the paper from SSRN.

Albert Chen's TVB Interview on the Standing Committee's Oath-Taking Interpretation of the Basic Law (Cantonese)

In an in-depth television interview with TVB Jade, Cheng Chan Lan Yue Professor in Constitutional Law, Albert Chen, discussed the implications of the National People's Congress Standing Committee's fifth interpretation of the Basic Law for the ongoing litigation over the oath-taking by Youngspiration legislators.  In a series of news clips, Professor Chen discusses the reasons for the interpretation, the likely impact on the Hong Kong legal system, and the wider implications for the implementation of Article 23 of the Basic Law, specifically the offence of secession.  The television interviews can be viewed here (Cantonese).  Professor Chen's interview with the South China Morning Post on the same topic can be found here.