Territorial Rights and Unilateral Secession

Statist (or functionalist) theories of territorial rights have often been thought to rule out the permissibility of unilateral secession from a legitimate, non-usurping state—if states have rights over their territory, the thought goes, then it is impermissible to unilaterally take any portion of this territory. In this article, I argue that the most plausible versions of statist theories of territorial rights do not have the theoretical resources to rule out unilateral secession. I show that proponents of these revised statist views cannot explain why unilateral secession from a legitimate, non-usurping state, is always impermissible, because they cannot explain why other types of entity—such as sub-state nations, for example, cannot have rights to territory. This opens the door for so-called “primary right” theories of secession—theories that do not make suffering from serious injustice a necessary condition for having a right to unilaterally secede. I conclude with a discussion of how to settle questions about the assignation of territorial rights in the event of secession

Applied philosophy · Civil rights · Human rights · Secession · Global Peace and Security Dynamics · Political Systems and Governance · Post-Soviet Geopolitical Dynamics