Sovereignty Referendums in the System of Law

Abstract

This chapter aims to build a general, theoretical and conceptual framework, which will be used in the following chapters. In law, sovereignty referendums may be studied from the point of international law/constitutional law perspectives on the one hand and according to material/formal aspects on the other. This chapter starts with a brief explanation of the legal nature and legal status of sovereignty referendums in international and constitutional laws. The material aspect (i.e., subject matter) of sovereignty referendums simultaneously involves the issues of state creation and constitution making. In the following sections of this chapter, there will be a systematic analysis of the legal nature of two fundamental elements, which exist in both the processes of state creation and constitution making, i.e., sovereignty and self-determination . The chapter further explains the formal approach (i.e., legal basis) to the sovereignty referendums. The final section offers a classification based on formal and material dimensions of the sovereignty referendums.