A principle of international law known as uti possidetis juris supports this result. In the interest of international stability, the colonial borders of emerging economies are considered protected. Granting every ethnic group the right to independence will lead to the emergence of an enormous number of States in the international community, which will be intolerable. Uti possidetis is consistent with the principle of State sovereignty. As a general rule, territorial integrity prevails when self-determination changes the boundaries of the State in which the group lives. During the clashes in Nagorno-Karabakh in September 2020, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan declared martial law. The Black War was a period of violent conflict between British settlers and Aborigines in Tasmania from the mid-1820s to 1832.[3] With an escalation of violence in the late 1820s, Lieutenant Governor George Arthur declared martial law in November 1828, granting legal immunity for the murder of Aborigines. It was to remain in force for more than three years, the longest period of martial law in the history of the British colonies on the Australian continent.[4] As of 2022, martial law has never been declared since the continent became a nation. Over time, however, consistency in practice has filled gaps in legal theory. The U.S. made extensive use of martial law during the Civil War, imposing it in border states such as Missouri and Kentucky, where U.S.
forces fought with Confederate insurgents. footnote20_xzf0jy4 20 Vladeck, “Emergency Power and the Militia Acts,” pp. 175-83; and Banks and Dycus, soldiers on the home front, 203-7. The Confederation also relied heavily on it. footnote21_p5zyahm 21 Mark E. Neely Jr., Southern Rights: Political Prisoners and the Myth of Confederate Constitutionalism (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1999). The practice did not end with the war: in the 90 years between the beginning of the civil war and the end of World War II, martial law was declared at least 60 times. footnote22_rqtrnju 22 Joseph Nunn, Guide to Declarations of Martial Law in the United States, Brennan Center for Justice, August 20, 2020. What had been patently unconstitutional in the eyes of the Louisiana Supreme Court in 1815 had become a relatively ordinary part of American life by the end of the 19th century.
Although Youngstown did not deal with declaring martial law, Justice Jackson briefly mentioned the concept in his unanimous opinion. After stating that the framers of the Constitution “made no express provision for the exercise of extraordinary authority in the aftermath of a crisis,” he added the following caveat in a footnote: “I exclude, as in a very limited category for me, the imposition of martial law.” footnote9_o1d7kp6 9 Youngstown, 343 U.S. at 650n19 (Jackson, J., with agreement). This wording recognizes the possibility that martial law may exist as an emergency force, although there is no explicit provision for this in the constitution. However, it does not indicate where that power lies, and certainly not that it belongs exclusively to the executive. Nor does it mean that the three-zone test is unenforceable under martial law. The primacy of the territorial principle over self-determination was clearly expressed in the case of Quebec`s unilateral secession from Canada. Quebec is a French-speaking province of a predominantly English country. The people of Quebec aspired to become independent from the rest of Canada, but in a case that reached the Supreme Court of Canada, it was held that the people of Quebec did not have a unilateral right of secession. Self-determination is generally seen as achieved, not through secession, but through an internal democratic process in which the pursuit of the political and social development of a people takes place within the framework of the existing State. According to him, Article 253 provides for a situation where civilian authorities do not enforce the laws instead of needing the assistance of the military to enforce the laws.
Accordingly, the President may send troops to suppress any insurrection or other violence that has the effect of depriving certain members of the population of that State of a constitutional right. Thus, if troops are deployed under Article 253, they will assume at least partially the role of civilian government. However, the genesis of Article 253 shows that it is best understood as allowing the army to replace only the local police, in the service of laws duly promulgated by the civilian authorities.
