Do Legitimate States Have a Right to Do Wrong?

2021 ◽  
Vol 35 (4) ◽  
pp. 515-525 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher Heath Wellman
Keyword(s):  
Self Determination ◽  
External Interference ◽  
Distinctive Features ◽  
Territorial Sovereignty ◽  
Collective Self ◽  
The Right

AbstractThis essay critically assesses Anna Stilz's argument in Territorial Sovereignty: A Philosophical Exploration that legitimate states have a right to do wrong. I concede that individuals enjoy a claim against external interference when they commit suberogatory acts, but I deny that the right to do wrong extends to acts that would violate the rights of others. If this is correct, then one must do more than merely invoke an individual's right to do wrong if one hopes to vindicate a legitimate state's right to commit injustices. Of course, there may be distinctive features of legitimate states that explain why they enjoy moral protections that individuals lack, but I argue that the value of collective self-determination is not up to this task. And even if these arguments fail, self-determination would at most explain why legitimate states enjoy a right to commit injustices against their own citizens; it would provide them no moral protection when they violate the rights of outsiders.

Reply to My Critics

2021 ◽  
Vol 35 (4) ◽  
pp. 527-541
Author(s):  
Anna Stilz
Keyword(s):  
Social Justice ◽  
Global Justice ◽  
Self Determination ◽  
Technical Term ◽  
External Interference ◽  
Territorial Sovereignty ◽  
Collective Self

AbstractThis essay replies to three critics of my book Territorial Sovereignty: A Philosophical Exploration. First, in response to Kit Wellman, I defend the claim that states sometimes have a right against external interference even when their decisions depart from the requirements of social justice. This “right to do wrong” is grounded in respect for a legitimate procedure of collective self-determination, in which the state's members have an important interest. Second, I reply to Michael Blake's concern that there is an inconsistency in my treatment of people's actual wills in politics. I clarify that my view places weight on the actual wills only of “cooperators” (a technical term), and that cooperators’ actual wills matter because they have claims against alien rule. There is no inconsistency in treating political annexation differently from immigration since immigrants rarely threaten to impose alien rule on cooperators. Finally, I address Adom Getachew's concerns about the imperial dimensions of the states system, arguing that my book contains resources for theorizing remedial claims to land in settler colonial societies and other reparative duties of global justice.

Territorial Sovereignty

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anna Stilz
Keyword(s):  
Natural Resources ◽  
International Law ◽  
International System ◽  
Core Values ◽  
The State ◽  
Self Determination ◽  
Territorial Sovereignty ◽  
Collective Self ◽  
Political Units ◽  
Territorial States

This book offers a qualified defense of a territorial states system. It argues that three core values—occupancy, basic justice, and collective self-determination—are served by an international system made up of self-governing, spatially defined political units. The defense is qualified because the book does not actually justify all of the sovereignty rights states currently claim and that are recognized in international law. Instead, the book proposes important changes to states’ sovereign prerogatives, particularly with respect to internal autonomy for political minorities, immigration, and natural resources. Part I of the book argues for a right of occupancy, holding that a legitimate function of the international system is to specify and protect people’s preinstitutional claims to specific geographical places. Part II turns to the question of how a state might acquire legitimate jurisdiction over a population of occupants. It argues that the state will have a right to rule a population and its territory if it satisfies conditions of basic justice and facilitates its people’s collective self-determination. Finally, Parts III and IV of this book argue that the exclusionary sovereignty rights to control over borders and natural resources that can plausibly be justified on the basis of the three core values are more limited than has traditionally been thought.

Between Race and Nation: Marcus Garvey and the Politics of Self-Determination

2020 ◽  
Vol 48 (3) ◽  
pp. 271-302 ◽  
Author(s):  
Desmond Jagmohan
Keyword(s):  
White Supremacy ◽  
Self Determination ◽  
Black Diaspora ◽  
Irish Nationalism ◽  
Independent State ◽  
Marcus Garvey ◽  
Collective Self ◽  
Self Rule ◽  
Argument Proceeds ◽  
The Right

This essay argues that Marcus Garvey held a constructivist theory of self-determination, one that saw nationalism and transnationalism as mutually necessary and reinforcing ideals. The argument proceeds in three steps. First it recovers Garvey’s transnationalist emphasis by looking at his intellectual debts to other diaspora struggles, namely political Zionism and Irish nationalism. Second it argues that Garvey held a constructivist view of national identity, which also grounds his argument that the black diaspora has a right to collective self-determination. Third it explicates Garvey’s further contention that the right to self-determination and the persistence of oppression give the African diaspora a pro tanto claim to an independent state, which he considered essential to vanquishing white supremacy and realizing collective self-rule.

Post-Soviet Russian Scholarship on Self-Determination

2021 ◽  
pp. 177-205
Author(s):  
Johannes Socher
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
Epistemic Community ◽  
Self Determination ◽  
Invisible College ◽  
Russian Government ◽  
Distinctive Features ◽  
Consensus View ◽  
The Right ◽  
Academic Debate ◽  
The Invisible

Chapter 5 covers the post-Soviet Russian scholarship on self-determination and shows how it forms a separate epistemic community, with peculiar features and doctrinal positions having existed already prior to Russia’s annexation of Crimea, and the willingness to adjust these positions to official assessments of the Russian government, if necessary. Even before the annexation of Crimea, the discourse on self-determination in Russian scholarship showed some distinctive features, of which most can be explained by a lasting legacy of the former Soviet doctrine of international law, in particular the position that the right to self-determination may in principle also confer a right of secession. In sum, these features stayed however more or less inside the canon of the ‘invisible college of international lawyers’, as Oscar Schachter once famously called it. Only with ‘Crimea’, the company arguably parted again, and once Russia’s actions on the peninsula made it impossible for Russian scholarship to stay within the consensus view without criticizing the Russian government, former consensus was partly replaced by historical-irredentist claims, creative re-readings of self-determination, and attempts in revitalizing the concept of consolidation of historical titles. Moreover, the assessment of ‘Crimea’ in Russian international law scholarship clearly shows that the views expressed in the academic debate by and large correlated with the official positions purported by the Russian government (although criticism was not completely absent, and in particular scholars from the younger generation in Russia were not all ready to accept the official interpretation of the events).

scholarly journals Black Liberation and Indigenous Sovereignty

2021 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Kirsten Brink Mosey
Keyword(s):  
Nova Scotia ◽  
Settler Colonialism ◽  
Self Determination ◽  
Black Liberation ◽  
Black Canadians ◽  
Collective Self ◽  
Indigenous Sovereignty ◽  
Set Up ◽  
The Right ◽  
Collective Thinking

As part of a collective thinking project, article proposes that all Black Canadians move to Nova Scotia to set up a decolonial, anti-racist, non-patriarchal, abolitionist settlement. Recognizing the denial of the right to collective self-determination for Black Canadians, this article explores how Black Canadians can work in solidarity with Indigenous solidarity movements to correct the injustices of settler-colonialism. 

Legitimacy and Self-Determination

2019 ◽  
pp. 89-118
Author(s):  
Anna Stilz
Keyword(s):  
Core Values ◽  
Self Determination ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Autonomy ◽  
Territorial Jurisdiction ◽  
Private Rights ◽  
Collective Self ◽  
The Right

This chapter turns to the question of how a state might acquire legitimate territorial jurisdiction over a population of rightful occupants. What gives a state the right to rule a specific territory and group of people? I hold that a state has a right to rule a territory and population if and only if it: (i) protects certain essential private rights for all its subjects and respects these rights in outsiders and (ii) it reflects the shared will of its population as to how—and by whom—they should be ruled. To gain the right to rule, a state must serve the second and third core values that underpin the states system: basic justice and collective self-determination. The chapter offers a specific account of the interest in collective self-determination, which it calls “the political autonomy theory.”

Do self-determining states have a conditional right to exclude would-be immigrants?

2021 ◽  
pp. 147488512199203
Author(s):  
Jinyu Sun
Keyword(s):  
Theoretical Framework ◽  
Self Determination ◽  
Legitimate Authority ◽  
Border Control ◽  
Global Citizen ◽  
Colonial Legacy ◽  
Collective Self ◽  
The Right ◽  
Territorial States ◽  
The Ideal

Why should (or should not) we have a system of different states that each claim both internal and external sovereignty? How can the state gain its legitimate authority to rule? What is the problem with the ideal of the ‘global citizen’? How should states respond to different groups’ secession claims? To what extent should states have the right to control their borders? If one finds such questions intriguing, one should read Anna Stilz’s book Territorial Sovereignty: A Philosophical Exploration. Stilz argues that a system of territorial states serves to protect important values – occupancy, basic justice and collective self-determination – which are key to living an autonomous life. I focus on the theory’s implication for the debates on border control. I contend that Stilz’s arguments still have difficulties grounding the state’s right to exclude would-be immigrants. That said, the book has done a great job in providing a liberal theoretical framework for us to reflect upon citizenship, immigration, succession claims, cosmopolitan ideals, the colonial legacy and disputes over borders and resources.

Introduction: The Normative Bases for Territorial Sovereignty

2019 ◽  
pp. 1-30
Author(s):  
Anna Stilz
Keyword(s):  
Geographical Area ◽  
Core Values ◽  
Self Determination ◽  
Moral Justification ◽  
Historical Contingency ◽  
Territorial Sovereignty ◽  
Collective Self ◽  
The Face ◽  
Territorial States ◽  
Separatist Groups

This chapter introduces the two main questions with which this book is concerned. First, is there any compelling moral justification for organizing our world as a territorial states system or is this mode of organization just a firmly rooted historical contingency? Second, how might a state demonstrate a right to control a population and geographical area within that system, especially in the face of challenges from foreign powers or separatist groups who dispute its title? The chapter introduces the three core values that ground the account of territorial sovereignty, occupancy, basic justice, and collective self-determination, and it distinguishes the book’s position from alternative views.

Philosophical Justifications of State Power over Immigration

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sarah Song
Keyword(s):  
National Identity ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
State Power ◽  
Self Determination ◽  
Golf Club ◽  
Freedom Of Association ◽  
Immigration Control ◽  
Collective Self ◽  
The Right ◽  
Normative Foundations

Chapter 3 turns to political theory to explore the normative foundations of the state’s power over immigration. It examines theories based on (1) the value of cultural and national identity, (2) the right to property, (3) freedom of association, and (4) freedom from unwanted obligations. The first three appeal to the value of collective self-determination. On the nationalist view, the fundamental imperative of immigration control is the preservation of culturally distinctive nations. The property argument derives the right of immigration control from the labor of citizens. The freedom-of-association argument regards citizens as parties to associations, such as marriage or a golf club, which have the right to refuse association with nonassociates. The freedom-from unwanted-obligations-argument does not directly engage with the idea of collective self-determination. I argue that each of these theories falls short of providing a convincing theory of state authority over immigration.

Intervention and Collective Self-Determination

1996 ◽  
Vol 10 ◽  
pp. 1-24 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeff McMahan
Keyword(s):  
Self Determination ◽  
State Sovereignty ◽  
Ethical Dimension ◽  
Common Assumption ◽  
Collective Self ◽  
The Common ◽  
The Right

Intervention often violates both respect for state sovereignty and the right to self-determination. McMahan focuses on the latter ethical dimension rather than the former political and legal one, although his claims have important implications for issues of state sovereignty. He challenges the common assumption that respect for self-determination requires an almost exceptionless doctrine of nonintervention by first defining the notions of “intervention” and “self-determination,” and then analyzing Walzer's doctrine of nonintervention. The recognition that there are different ideals of self-determination results in a less rigid and more permissive doctrine of nonintervention.

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