AUTODECISION. - The faculty or right of peoples to dispose freely of themselves is designated by the term self-determination or self-disposition. Unknown to international law until the 18th century, it was erected into 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 of organizing himself according to his 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 pontifical legate in 1790) and ideological ones converged to suggest the transfer of the concept of autonomy from man to peoples, to whom was attributed the right of unconditional freedom in deciding their own political destinies.
The principle was further elaborated by nationalist conceptions, especially in Italy. Mancini and the current that looked to him, supporting national claims on a naturalistic ground, in accordance with the bent of contemporary thought, appealed to it in order to uphold the right of nationalities to political independence and to violent secession in pursuit of their unitary aspirations. At least originally, therefore, the principle of nationality and that of self-disposition were connected. On this relationship internationalists dispute today, some denying the connection, such as Fauchille, others admitting it.
Be that as it may, the principle survived in the liberal conception. It was taken up by President Wilson in his declarations to Congress in 1918, proposed as a criterion for the settlement of peoples after the 1914-18 war and adopted in the conclusion of the armistice with Germany and in the preparation of the peace treaties as an absolute dogma. It was invoked again in 1938 with regard to the conflict between Germany and Czechoslovakia, which ended with the Munich arbitration. At the end of the Second World War the victorious powers took no account of it in the stipulation of the peace treaties with the defeated nations. Only in the Charter of the United Nations, in art. 1, is self-determination reaffirmed, together with the equality of rights, as a principle that the nations undertake to keep in mind in developing friendly relations among peoples. Despite this vitality of its own, it has not been recognized as having a juridical character. On 16 Apr. 1921, on the occasion of the divergences 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 also excludes it as an absolute principle, as it has been historically formulated, because, thus understood, it is founded upon a false concept of liberty, which takes no account of the acquired rights of the State and of the natural duty of citizens to fidelity, obedience and collaboration for the common good, in order to maintain political unity, which alone is necessarily required by the objective order and by the prevailing ends of human life. Its rigid application, besides proving impossible in many cases for economic, strategic and frontier reasons, could lead to the subversion of existing rights, and would throw nations into perpetual agitation with the danger of shattering international society into a dust of organisms with scant vitality.
This does not exclude the existence of rights and just aspirations among peoples, of which international law must take account. To these referred Benedict XV in the message of 28 July 1915 and in that of 1 Aug. 1917, proposing to the belligerents "to take account, to the extent that is just and possible, of the aspirations of peoples," and Pius XII in the allocution of 24 Dec. 1939, where he alluded to the necessity of meeting "the true needs and just demands of nations and peoples, as well as of ethnic minorities," adding nevertheless that these "do not always suffice to establish a strict right, when treaties recognized and sanctioned or other juridical titles that oppose them are in force."