Taking up space on earth: Theorizing territorial rights, the justification of states and immigration from a global standpoint

Abstract

Abstract The author’s 2012 bookOn Global Justicegives pride of place to the idea that humanity collectively owns the earth. Independently, there has been a flourishing literature on the justification of rights to territory. Central to this discussion are a Kantian and a Lockean approach. This paper recapitulates the author’s approach to humanity’s collective ownership of the earth and argues that, properly understood, both of those approaches should integrate the global standpoint constituted thereby. However, the goal here is not to amend the Kantian and Lockean approaches to territory, but to refute them. To that end the paper also argues that both approaches endorse an unacceptably strong view of the justifiability of states and should therefore be rejected. The view inOn Global Justiceemerges vindicated, according to which territorial rights, the justification of states and immigration all need to be theorized together, and need to be theorized from a genuinely global standpoint.

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