SELF-DETERMINATION. – The faculty or right of peoples to dispose freely of themselves is designated by the term self-determination or self-disposal. Unknown to international law until the 18th century, it was elevated to a principle by the French Revolution. Enlightenment humanitarianism placed man at the center of the political system, recognizing in him an unlimited autonomy and the faculty to organize himself according to his own will. On this basis, popular sovereignty was erected. Contingent political motives (such as the annexation of Avignon requested by its inhabitants after they had driven out the papal legate in 1790) and ideological ones converged to suggest transferring the concept of autonomy from the individual to peoples, to whom was attributed the right to unconditional freedom in deciding their own political fate.
The principle was further developed by nationalist conceptions, especially in Italy. Mancini and the school that followed him, grounding national claims in a naturalistic framework in line with contemporary thought, invoked it to uphold the right of nationalities to political independence and even violent secession in pursuit of their unifying aspirations. At least in its origins, therefore, the principle of nationality and that of self-disposal were linked. Today, this relationship is debated among international lawyers, with some, like Fauchille, denying the connection and others acknowledging II.
In any case, the principle persisted within liberal thought. It was revived by President Wilson in his 1918 congressional declarations, proposed as a criterion for the settlement of peoples after the 1914–18 war, and adopted in the armistice with Germany and in the preparation of the peace treaties as an absolute dogma. It was again invoked in 1938 regarding the conflict between Germany and Czechoslovakia, which ended with the Munich arbitration. At the close of the Second World War, the victorious powers made no account of it in drafting the peace treaties with the defeated nations. Only in the United Nations Charter, at Article 1, is self-determination reaffirmed, alongside the equality of rights, as a principle that nations commit themselves to bear in mind when developing friendly relations among peoples. Despite this vitality, it has not been recognized as possessing a juridical character. On 16 April 1921, in the dispute between Sweden and Finland over the sovereignty of the Åland Islands, the Council of the League of Nations declared that “the principle of the right of peoples to dispose freely of themselves is not a norm of international law properly so called.”
Catholic doctrine likewise rejects it as an absolute principle, as historically formulated, because, so understood, it rests upon a false concept of freedom that fails to take into account the acquired rights of the state and the natural duty of citizens to loyalty, obedience, and cooperation for the common good, which are necessary to maintain political unity as demanded by the objective order and the prevailing ends of human life. Its rigid application, moreover, would prove impossible in many cases for economic, strategic, and border-related reasons and could lead to the subversion of existing rights, throwing nations into perpetual agitation and risking the disintegration of the international community into a dust of feebly viable entities.
This does not exclude the existence of rights and just aspirations among peoples, which international law must take into account. To these, Benedict XV referred in his message of 28 July 1915 and that of 19 August 1917, proposing to the belligerents that they “take into account, to the extent of the just and the possible, the aspirations of peoples,” and Pius XII in his allocution of 24 December 1939, where he spoke of the need to meet “the true needs and just demands of nations and peoples, as well as of ethnic minorities,” while adding, however, that these “do not always suffice to establish a strict right when recognized and sanctioned treaties or other legal titles stand in opposition.”