ABSTRACT
The historical background, geopolitical context, legal environment, and their ultimate outcome preclude easy comparison between the successful secession of Montenegro from the State Union of Serbia and Montenegro, and the unsuccessful secession of Quebec from Canada. Montenegro is a small European polity that re-emerged as an independent state after decades of communist rule. Quebec remains a large province in a prosperous liberal-democratic federation. In the former, socialist, Yugoslavia, the right to secession was briefly mentioned, but never a subject of debate. In Canada, it was the other way around: secession was never far from the political and academic agenda, but its status in constitutional law, at least until the Supreme Court’s judgment in the Secession Reference, was never certain.
