Nation and national state in the political and legal thought of interwar Galicia: legal analysis of the concepts of Kosty Levytski and Andrey Sheptytski

The relevance of the problem is determined by the need to comprehend both the historical experience of Ukrainian statehood and the contemporary challenges facing the Ukrainian state in the fields of international and constitutional law. The armed aggression of the Russian Federation against Ukraine and the resulting temporary occupation of Ukrainian territories have brought to the fore, in particular, the issues of the right of nations to self-determination, the legitimacy of statehood, and the moral and legal limits of national struggle. In this context, a legal analysis of the concepts of the nation and the national state developed by Kost Levytskyi and Andrey Sheptytskyi–two leading representatives of Ukrainian political and legal thought in interwar Galicia, who represented different yet moderate intellectual and political milieus–makes it possible to assess the substance of their views on the nation as a subject of law and the national state as a legitimate legal organism.

The purpose of the article, based on the application of a set of scholarly methods–particularly the dialectical method for analyzing the interrelation of political, legal, and social processes, and the documentary method for examining the publications of K. Levytskyi and A. Sheptytskyi–is to conduct a legal analysis of their concepts of the nation and the national state, with an emphasis on the place of these concepts in the development of the Ukrainian legal tradition and their significance for contemporary international and constitutional law.

It is argued that in the political and legal thought of interwar Galicia, the concepts of the nation and the national state were formed within two complementary but methodologically distinct approaches: a legal-legitimist approach (K. Levytskyi) and a moral, natural-law approach (A. Shep-tytskyi). It is emphasized that in the legacy of both thinkers, the nation appears not only as an ethno-cultural community but also as a collective subject of law endowed with an inalienable right to self-determination. The national state is interpreted as a legitimate legal organism that arises from the will of the nation and acquires legitimacy not through violence, but through the institutional and normative articulation of that will. It is noted that Levytskyi’s thought is dominated by international-law legalism, based on treaties, the principle of autonomy, and appeals to international law, whereas Sheptytskyi’s concept of statehood rests on a natural-law foundation linked to human dignity, the moral responsibility of the nation, and the duties of the state toward the common good. Ultimately, the comparison undertaken makes it possible to reveal the continuity of the Ukrainian legal tradition in matters of statehood and to demonstrate its relevance for contemporary international and constitutional law, particularly in the context of the right of peoples to self-determination and the legitimacy of the national state under conditions of armed aggression.