Open Access Journal

ISSN: 2183-2463

Article | Open Access

An Imperfect Firewall: Quebec’s Constitutional Right of Secession as a Device Against Domination

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Abstract:  The idea of including a right of secession in democratic constitutions has been discussed by different political and legal theorists; however, little has been said on the matter from the point of view of democratic-republican political philosophy. This article undertakes this effort by means of a normative analysis of Quebec’s constitutional right of secession, as outlined in the Quebec Secession Reference. This analysis shows how the non-unilateral nature of this right minimises the risks for republican freedom (as non-domination) and inclusion in the Quebec secession conflict, while the fact that it is limited to a national constitutional framework dampens this achievement.

Keywords:  Canada; constitutionalism; democracy; domination; factions; Quebec; republicanism; secession

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DOI: https://doi.org/10.17645/pag.v9i4.4569


© Lluís Pérez-Lozano. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits any use, distribution, and reproduction of the work without further permission provided the original author(s) and source are credited.