Prof. Maule asks: >[A]re other nations permitted, under > international law, to stop the Iraqi people (or some specific "people" > of Iraq (e.g., Kurds)) from splitting off into a separate nation?
If there were no pre-exisiting legal obligation holding that the Kurds could not, I do not think that there is any international law preventing the Kurds from establishing a separate independent state. Indeed, the right to self-determination under international law allows this. In the case of the U.S., the southern states legally were not allowed to secede because they (and their respective peoples) had agreed under the Constitution to be part of the Union. The secession of the southern states violated their treaty/Constitutional obligations -- also a violation of the law of nations. It did not matter if the federal government had violated the Constitution (an argument made by some states' right advocates) because the Constitution was a federal treaty in the sense of a foedus from which no state can withdraw. Only by the terms of the Constitution -- viz., an amendment allowing states to withdraw from the Union -- could the states have withdrawn. Francisco Forrest Martin
