Roundtable on Annie Stilz, Territorial Sovereignty

Session Submission Type: Author meet critics

Session Description

Stilz’s Territorial Sovereignty, A Philosophical Exploration (OUP 2019) offers a qualified defence of a territorial states-system. It argues that three core values—occupancy, basic justice, and collective self-determination—are best served by an international system made up of self-governing, spatially defined political units. The defence is qualified because the book does not actually justify all 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 Territorial Sovereignty argues for a right of occupancy, holding that a legitimate function of the international system is to protect people’s 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 has a right to rule a population and its territory only if it satisfies conditions of basic justice and also facilitates its people’s collective self-determination. Here Stilz engages sympathetically with ideas of popular sovereignty and democratic control that are central to recent populist movements, arguing that there is a plausible moral core to the claims made on behalf of “the people.” Finally, Parts III and IV of this book argue that the 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. Here Stilz shows that we can embrace the value of collective self-determination without endorsing the exclusionary, nationalist, and anti-immigrant conclusions that have been central to populism’s recent revival.

Sub Unit

• DIVISION 2: Foundations of Political Theory

Chair

• Paulina Ochoa Espejo Haverford College

Presenters

• Sarah Song University of California, Berkeley

• Margaret Moore Queens University

• Alejandra Mancilla University of Oslo

• Jakob Huber Goethe University Frankfurt

• Anna Stilz Princeton University