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The Changing Face Of Recognition In International Law: A Case Study Of Tibet, Robert D. Sloane

Faculty Scholarship

The concept of state recognition in public international law has long been mired in a (pejoratively) academic debate between the "declaratory" and "constitutive" schools. This article strives to reappraise and recast recognition through analysis of the history and status of Tibet and its government-in-exile. I argue that, for analytic purposes, we must distinguish three forms of recognition: first, political recognition, the formal acts by which one sovereign recognizes another's claim to statehood or legitimate governance; second, legal recognition, a judgment of recognition based on some set of reasonably objective legal criteria; and third, civil recognition, the force of popular moral …