Professor and Associate Dean Milena Sterio presented on a panel entitled “Self-Determination, Secession, and Non-Intervention in the Age of Crimea and Kosovo” on October 24, at the 2014 International Law Weekend, a premier conference in international law organized and sponsored by the American Branch of the International Law Association and the International Law Students’ Association.  The conference, as always, took place at the offices of the New York City Association of the Bar, and at Fordham Law School.

Professor Sterio’s remarks focused on the need to develop a new normative framework in international law on the subject of secession.  International law presently affords specific groups (“peoples”) the right to self-determination and remedial secession only in the decolonization/occupation context, but international law is neutral on the issue of secession for any groups outside these two paradigms.  Professor Sterio argued for the need to advance international law in order to develop specific criteria for secession, which would apply to secessionist struggles.

The other panelists, alongside Professor Sterio, included Professor Valerie Epps from Suffolk Law School, Professor Brad Roth from Wayne State Law School, and Professor John Cerone, a visiting professor at the University of Pittsburgh Law School and at the Flethcher School for Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University.