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Determining New Selves

As one of the most significant international lawyers to emerge from the third world, Mohammed Bedjaoui is a towering figure—prolific as a scholar, active as a diplomat, and influential as a judge. Yet his intellectual and professional trajectory—and the way in which this trajectory tracked the history of post-1945 decolonization—has not been subject to sustained examination. Thus, this chapter traces Bedjaoui’s shift from an advocate of Algerian independence to a champion of self-determination in other states and territories. It examines Bedjaoui’s 1961 monograph Law and the Algerian Revolution, and then analyses the various arguments that he advanced in 1975 as a representative of Algeria in advisory proceedings relating to the international legal status of Western Sahara. It suggests that Bedjaoui’s personal development reflected a series of broader developments in regard to the commitment to political and economic self-determination that underwrote the push for decolonization.