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.

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.

Conclusion: Territorial Sovereignty and Global Institutions

2019 ◽  
pp. 249-258
Author(s):  
Anna Stilz
Keyword(s):  
Limit State ◽  
Self Determination ◽  
Climate Justice ◽  
State Sovereignty ◽  
World Government ◽  
Global Institutions ◽  
Multilateral Cooperation ◽  
Multilateral Institutions ◽  
Collective Self ◽  
Territorial States

This book has offered a qualified defense of a territorial states system. This chapter summarizes the book’s argument and suggests we have a common responsibility to work to create multilateral institutions that would better specify, allocate, and enforce duties to protect the fundamental territorial interests of the earth’s inhabitants. Following Kant, the chapter argues for institutionalizing these cosmopolitan duties through multilateral cooperation and horizontal sanctioning, rather than by instituting a world government with executive powers. There is every reason to work toward climate justice, more extensive refugee rights, and other cosmopolitan reforms via “self-binding” arrangements that will reflect, rather than violate, collective self-determination. Such a strategy may allow for the establishment of multilateral institutions that can limit state sovereignty by enforceable duties to secure fundamental territorial interests.

Is There a Right to Exclude?

2019 ◽  
pp. 187-216
Author(s):  
Anna Stilz
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Core Values ◽  
Self Determination ◽  
Border Control ◽  
Collective Self ◽  
Subsistence Rights

This chapter continues to investigate whether the three core values defended in this book (occupancy, basic justice, and collective self-determination) can justify states’ exclusionary claims to border control. This chapter focuses on what we might call opportunity migrants, those who are not suffering from persecution, persistent violations of their basic human rights (including subsistence rights), environmental devastation, or cultural or political oppression. Can states exclude migrants whose fundamental territorial interests are not at stake? What about travelers, students, economic migrants, and so on? The chapter argues that a state may exclude immigrants of this sort only where it can offer a plausible case that their entry would cause harm.

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.

scholarly journals REWIEV ON THE BOOK “TERRITORIAL SOVEREIGNTY. A PHILOSOPHICAL EXPLORATION” BY ANNA STILZ

2020 ◽  
Vol 14 (4) ◽  
pp. 153-156
Author(s):  
Nikita Bondarenko ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Political Science ◽  
Current System ◽  
Core Values ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
The Body ◽  
State Sovereignty ◽  
Princeton University ◽  
Territorial Sovereignty ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Territorial States

The review is devoted to the book by the professor of political science at Princeton University Anna Stilz “Territorial Sovereignty. A Philosophical Exploration” (2019). The main issues of the researcher's work are territoriality, sovereignty, and the system of territorial states. The author proposes a revision of this system from a philosophical point of view. Professor Stilz defends the concept of a state's territorial sovereignty against contemporary criticism. Her position is based on arguments of both cosmopolitanism and liberal nationalism. The researcher recognizes principles of open borders, aid to refugee, global cooperation and criticizes the nationalist interpretation of state sovereignty. However, unlike the view of the cosmopolitan school, A. Stilz believes that the implementation of these liberal principles is possible within the system of territorial states. Moreover, defending state sovereignty, the professor uses ideas of the philosophy of the Enlightenment, Kant's doctrines about the interaction between the individual and the state, and about state sovereignty. The main contribution of this work to the body of political science is three core values: occupancy right, basic justice, and collective self-determination. According to Anna Stilz, three core values can modify the current system of territorial states in accordance with new global challenges.

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.

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.

Married Life in the Middle Ages, 900-1300

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elisabeth van Houts
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Married Couple ◽  
Self Determination ◽  
Emotional Life ◽  
Social And Emotional ◽  
Individual Agency ◽  
Married Life ◽  
The Face ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Individual

This book contains an analysis of the experience of married life by men and women in Christian medieval Europe c. 900–1300. The focus will be on the social and emotional life of the married couple rather than on the institutional history of marriage. The book consists of three parts: the first part (Getting Married) is devoted to the process of getting married and wedding celebrations, the second part (Married Life) discusses the married life of lay couples and clergy, their sexuality, and any remarriage, while the third part (Alternative Living) explores concubinage and polygyny as well as the single life in contrast to monogamous sexual unions. Four main themes are central to the book. First, the tension between patriarchal family strategies and the individual family member’s freedom of choice to marry and, if so, to what partner; second, the role played by the married priesthood in their quest to have individual agency and self-determination accepted in their own lives in the face of the growing imposition of clerical celibacy; third, the role played by women in helping society accept some degree of gender equality and self-determination to marry and in shaping the norms for married life incorporating these principles; fourth, the role played by emotion in the establishment of marriage and in married life at a time when sexual and spiritual love feature prominently in medieval literature.

Unwanted Compatriots: Alienation, Migration, and Political Autonomy

2021 ◽  
Vol 35 (4) ◽  
pp. 491-501
Author(s):  
Michael Blake
Keyword(s):  
Political Institutions ◽  
Political Authority ◽  
Self Determination ◽  
Apparent Contradiction ◽  
Political Autonomy ◽  
Territorial Sovereignty ◽  
Hypothetical Consent

AbstractIn Territorial Sovereignty: A Philosophical Exploration, Anna Stilz argues that legitimate political authority requires the actual—rather than hypothetical—consent of the governed. I argue, however, that her analysis of that consent is inconsistent, in the weight it ascribes to the felt desire to refrain from doing politics with some particular group of people. In the context of secession and self-determination, the lack of actual consent to shared political institutions is weighty enough to render such institutions presumptively illegitimate. In the context of migration, however, a lack of actual consent to the presence of newcomers is ascribed nearly no weight, and instead is taken as evidence of irrationality or immoral preferences. I argue that this apparent contradiction must be clarified before Stilz's overall account of self-governance can be accepted.

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