Dividing the State

The events of recent history affirm the urgent need for a satisfactory definition of the conditions under which a minority within a state has the legal right to secede. Although the concept of sovereignty has been progressively weakened, it still presents the major theoretical difficulty in this area. There is currently no source of international law that would give a legal body like a court the authority to recognize the division of an oppressive or illegitimate state into separate legal entiti