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Full-Text Articles in Comparative and Foreign Law
Why Redraw The Map Of Africa: A Moral And Legal Inquiry, Makau Wa Mutua
Why Redraw The Map Of Africa: A Moral And Legal Inquiry, Makau Wa Mutua
Michigan Journal of International Law
The author argues in this Article that the post-colonial state, the uncritical successor of the colonial state, is doomed because it lacks basic moral legitimacy. Its normative and territorial construction on the African colonial state, itself a legal and moral nullity, is the fundamental reason for its failure. The author argues that, at independence, the West decolonized the colonial state, not the African peoples subject to it. In other words, the right to self-determination was exercised not by the victims of colonization but their victimizers, the elites who control the international state system.
Democracy And Respect For Difference: The Case Of Fiji, Joseph H. Carens
Democracy And Respect For Difference: The Case Of Fiji, Joseph H. Carens
University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform
In what follows, I will first offer a capsule history of Fiji. I then will identify some of the moral questions that emerge, both for the inhabitants of Fiji and for us as observers. I will present some tentative answers to these moral questions, reflecting as I go on what this tells us about the possibilities and limits of normative theory, but also trying to note where my normative judgments rest upon features of the story that I think others would want to contest and trying to indicate how alternative readings of the history would affect the normative judgments, if …
Perestroika African Style: One-Party Government And Human Rights In Tanzania, John Quigley
Perestroika African Style: One-Party Government And Human Rights In Tanzania, John Quigley
Michigan Journal of International Law
The one-party systems in Africa have drawn negative reactions from Western States that provide economic aid. The article assesses the one-party system in light of international human rights law and asks whether aid-giving States must consider whether one-party rule in recipient States violates international standards. In this connection, the article asks whether the rights of association and political freedom as developed in Europe can fairly be applied to Africa, given its historical experience.