The Right to Exclude, Human Rights,and Political Facts

Abstract

AbstractIn this paper I will defend a limited right to exclusion. Legitimate states are entitled to refuse the entrance of unwanted immigrants, if necessary with force. However, I will also work out leverage points for a cosmopolitan critique of this view, one that starts with national borders as they are and constructs human rights conditionalities as they could be. In particular, I propose an immanent critique of Michael Blake’s jurisdictional theory of immigration. Blake gives a compelling argument that sovereign states have a prerogative to decide upon their own border policies, a prerogative that is only constrained by the international human rights regime. However, even if cosmopolitans accept this argument (which I think they should), they still have good reasons to expand the prevailing human rights regime in three respects: with regard to the classification of basic human rights, the domain of human rights obligations, and blind spots of the current human rights regime.