Legitimität und Selbstbestimmung

State consent as the prevailing legitimising principle of international legal norms has become increasingly insufficient lately. This book reconstructs collective self-determination as an immanent legitimacy criterion that can supplement and materially underpin the principle of state consent. Basing his analysis on the value orientations inscribed in the norms, institutions and convictions of the actors of international law, the author singles out collective self-determination as the value that integrates and reproduces international law as a form of social practice. By employing such an immanent legitimation strategy, the book avoids the conventionalism or utopianism of other strategies and thereby establishes a legitimacy principle that is based on the normative convictions of the actors in international law, but at the same time takes the ethical and functional foundations of international legal praxis into account.