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32 Stan. J. Int'l L. 255 (1996)
The Diffusion of Sovereignty: Self-Determination in the Post-Colonial Age

handle is hein.journals/stanit32 and id is 261 raw text is: The Diffusion of Sovereignty: Self-Determination in the Post- Colonial Age GERRYJ. SIMPSON* -But do you know what a nation means? says John Wyse. -Yes, says Bloom. -What is it? says John Wyse. -A nation, says Bloom. A nation is the same people living in the same place. -By God, then, says Ned, laughing, if that's so I'm a nation for I'm living in the same place for the past five years.I I. INTRODUCTION The vocabularies and strategies of classical colonial self- determination are no longer adequate tools with which to confront the tumult of ethnicity2 that has propelled us into the post-Cold War era. The end of Empire has merely revealed most states to be imperial.3 In turn, the polyethnic dreams of cosmopolitanism have become the * Senior Lecturer, Law Faculty, Australian National University, Canberra, Australia. MA, LL.B., Aberdeen University, Scotland. LL.M., University of British Columbia, Canada. This pa per was completed in partial fulfillment of the Doctor ofJuridical Science Degree, University of Michigan at Ann Arbor. I would like to thank my supervisor Professor Jos6 Alvarez for his extensive comments and suggestions on various drafts of this paper. The following people also contributed greatly to the formation of many of the ideas contained here: Catriona Drew, Deborah Cass, Vladimir Djeric, Robert McCorquodale, Helen Rhoades, Karyn Anderson, Di Otto, Helen Durham, MaryAnn Hughson, and Christian Tietje. Section IIB of this essay is based partly on a Master's thesis on the right to secession completed at the University of British Columbia Law School in 1989, under the supervision of Professors Maurice Copithorne and Douglas Sanders. Special thanks tojo-Anne Dilabough. I JAMESJOYCE, ULYSSES 331 (Vintage Books 1961) (1914) (emphasis added). 2 DANIEL P MONYIHAN, PANDAEMONIUM: ETHNIcITYIN INTERNATIONAL POLTICS 15 (1994). 3 Apart from the most egregious forms of colonialism (East Timor and Tibet) and neo- colonialism (Guatemala and Nigeria), it is generally recognized that most (especially large) nations are founded on imperial pretensions the belief in national destiny and the conquest of territory in its pursuit) and none have fully accommodated the self-determinative rights of their minorities or indigenous groups (e.g., Native Americans in the United States, the Sami people in Sweden, the Aborigines in Australia, the Basques in Spain). 255 32 STAN.J. INT'L L. 255 (1996)