This course will be taught entirely online via Zoom.
In our time, the nation state has been under pressure from above, where the forces of globalization are leading to the creation of transnational structures of governance and allegiance, and from below, where the forces of secession in the name of self-determination may threaten to break up once durable national structures. Just now, the forces of Balkanization are most prominent, with the UK and Brexit, which will surely lead to internal pressures of secession by Scotland, North Ireland and Wales, and serious complications on the border between North Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. In Spain, meanwhile, the Catalan independence movement continues to fester. Once a progenitor of much of the modern trend towards multinational cooperation, the United States has in recent years been a force of resistance and disruption to global arrangements.. And even in the United States, the idea of secession has been floated seriously in recent months. There is a rich landscape of legal and extralegal questions raised by these events, and by the reciprocal forces of globalization. In this seminar, we will explore that landscape.
Sager, Lawrence 
Ferreres, Victor