ABSTRACT
In 1998 the Canadian Supreme Court observed that the issue of secession raises ‘momentous questions that go to the heart of [any] system of constitutional government’ (Quebec Secession Reference 1998: 292). However, few state constitutions have explicit provisions governing the issue. Ethiopia in Article 39, Saint Kitts and Nevis in Articles 113–14, and Liechtenstein in Article 4(2) are the only current states that explicitly allow for secession in their constitutions. The constitutions of some states do contain provisions implicitly permitting secession. Thus, Article 3 of Austria’s constitution states that changes to the federal territory of Austria can be ‘effected by corresponding constitutional laws of the Federation and the State whose territory undergoes change’. Article 6 of Singapore’s constitution stipulates that the sovereignty of Singapore can only be surrendered if approved by a two-thirds vote at nationally organized referendum. Notwithstanding that the issue of secession is, according to Sanford Levinson, ‘the most fundamental’ of constitutional questions (Levinson 2004: 461), it has only occasionally been the subject of judicial analysis, with decisions by the supreme judicial bodies in the United States of America (Radan 2006), Canada (Quebec Secession Reference 1998) and the former Yugoslavia (Radan 2001) being the most important.
