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.

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.

Human Rights, Membership, and Moral Responsibility in an Unjust World

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alex Levitov ◽  
Stephen Macedo
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Moral Responsibility ◽  
The Other ◽  
Self Determination ◽  
Free Movement ◽  
International Human Rights ◽  
Collective Self ◽  
International Human ◽  
Political Communities

International human rights instruments establish both a fundamental right to collective self-determination and a right of individuals to free movement. What principles and priorities should guide us when these two sets of claims come into conflict? When and under what conditions are political communities morally entitled to exclude those who wish to enter? And when, on the other side, do the rights of individuals seeking entry take priority? These issues are both philosophically contested and of great practical import, and this chapter seeks to illuminate them.

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.

Human Rights and Collective Self-Determination

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Jones
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
International Law ◽  
Self Determination ◽  
Collective Good ◽  
Moral Thinking ◽  
Group Rights ◽  
Collective Rights ◽  
Collective Goods ◽  
Collective Self ◽  
The Relationship

The doctrine of human rights has been closely associated with rights of collective self-determination in both international law and moral thinking. How should we conceive their relationship? Can the first subsume the second? Many commentators think not since human rights are rights of individuals while rights of collective self-determination must be group rights. This chapter presents a conception of group rights as collective rights and examines the relationship between group rights so conceived and collective goods. It argues that some collective rights can be human rights and these include the collective right to the collective good of self-determination. The link between human rights and peoples’ rights to self-determination is not however complete. The doctrine of human rights can incorporate the principle that the determined should also be the determiners but it cannot tell us how humanity should be divided into peoples each of whom is entitled to be self-determining.

Self-Determination Through Autonomy or Independence? – On the Current and Future Position of New Caledonia

ICL Journal ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 67-105
Author(s):  
Markku Suksi
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
New Caledonia ◽  
Legal Order ◽  
The Self ◽  
Self Determination ◽  
Normative Framework ◽  
European Court ◽  
Determination Process ◽  
The Right

Abstract New Caledonia is a colonial territory of France. Since the adoption of the Nouméa Accord in 1998, a period of transition towards the exercise of self-determination has been going on. New Caledonia is currently a strong autonomy, well entrenched in the legal order of France from 1999 on. The legislative powers have been distributed between the Congress of New Caledonia and the Parliament of France on the basis of a double enumeration of legislative powers, an arrangement that has given New Caledonia control over many material fields of self-determination. At the same time as this autonomy has been well embedded in the constitutional fabric of France. The Nouméa Accord was constitutionalized in the provisions of the Constitution of France and also in an Institutional Act. This normative framework created a multi-layered electorate that has presented several challenges to the autonomy arrangement and the procedure of self-determination, but the European Court of Human Rights and the UN Human Rights Committee have resolved the issues regarding the right to vote in manners that take into account the local circumstances and the fact that the aim of the legislation is to facilitate the self-determination of the colonized people, the indigenous Kanak people. The self-determination process consists potentially of a series of referendums, the first of which was held in 2018 and the second one in 2020. In both referendums, those entitled to vote returned a No-vote to the question of ‘Do you want New Caledonia to attain full sovereignty and become independent?’ A third referendum is to be expected before October 2022, and if that one also results in a no to independence, a further process of negotiations starts, with the potential of a fourth referendum that will decide the mode of self-determination New Caledonia will opt for, independence or autonomy.

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