ABSTRACT
Secession can be brought up in a conceptual connection with each of the three different themes from constitutional theory and practice – constitutionalism, constitutional law and constitutionalization. In the first case, the emphasis would be on the question whether placing a right to secession in the supreme law of the state would be in line with constitutionalism, as a set of specific liberal and democratic principles and practices. In the second case, the focus would be on the historical cases of constitutionally entrenched secession clauses and/or on the de lege lata analysis of the current comparative constitutional law of secession. This survey would not cover only explicit constitutional clauses on secession (for example, Constitution of Ethiopia), but also relevant judicial decisions, which interpret constitutional documents as, in principle, not excluding the possibility of entrenching an exit option (for example, Secession Reference of the Supreme Court of Canada). Finally, in the third case, the principal question would be: what is the most appropriate constitutional design of the secession clause (de lege ferenda)? This inquiry, first, would have to answer which of the two basic models – substantive or procedural constitutional right to secession – is more preferable. In the next step, it would be necessary to determine a series of practical issues, that is, the definition of a potential holder of a right to secession, the appropriate territorial unit for the exercise of such a right, the problem of the ‘recursive secession’ of dissenting minorities in a seceding area, the clarity of the referendum question, the eligibility to vote, the majority threshold and so on.
