The Birthright Lottery

The vast majority of the global population acquires citizenship purely by accidental circumstances of birth. There is little doubt that securing membership status in a given state bequeaths to some a world filled with opportunity and condemns others to a life with little hope. Gaining privileges by such arbitrary criteria as one’s birthplace is discredited in virtually all fields of public life, yet birthright entitlements still dominate our laws when it comes to allotting membership in a state. In The Birthright Lottery, Ayelet Shachar argues that birthright citizenship in an affluent society can be thought of as a form of property inheritance: that is, a valuable entitlement transmitted by law to a restricted group of recipients under conditions that perpetuate the transfer of this prerogative to their heirs. She deploys this fresh perspective to establish that nations need to expand their membership boundaries beyond outdated notions of blood-and-soil in sculpting the body politic. Located at the intersection of law, economics, and political philosophy, The Birthright Lottery further advocates redistributional obligations on those benefiting from the inheritance of membership, with the aim of ameliorating its most glaring opportunity inequalities.

The vast majority of the global population acquires citizenship purely by accidental circumstances of birth. There is little doubt that securing membership status in a given state bequeaths to some a world filled with opportunity and condemns others to a life with little hope. Gaining privileges by such arbitrary criteria as one’s birthplace is discredited in virtually all fields of public life, yet birthright entitlements still dominate our laws when it comes to allotting membership in a state. In The Birthright Lottery, Ayelet Shachar argues that birthright citizenship in an affluent society can be thought of as a form of property inheritance: that is, a valuable entitlement transmitted by law to a restricted group of recipients under conditions that perpetuate the transfer of this prerogative to their heirs. She deploys this fresh perspective to establish that nations need to expand their membership boundaries beyond outdated notions of blood-and-soil in sculpting the body politic. Located at the intersection of law, economics, and political philosophy, The Birthright Lottery further advocates redistributional obligations on those benefiting from the inheritance of membership, with the aim of ameliorating its most glaring opportunity inequalities.

Birth-based citizenship is widely considered to be the most secure claim to political belonging. Despite the general belief that liberal democracies are formed through consent, in fact, most people are members of a political community by virtue of the circumstances of their birth. In Canadian Club, Lois Harder tracks the development of Canada’s Citizenship Act from its first iteration in 1947 to the provisions governing the citizenship of children born abroad to Canadian parents with the assistance of reproductive technologies. Reviewing a range of cases, Harder reveals how membership in the Canadian political community relies on norms surrounding gender, family, and sexuality, as well as presumptions regarding the constitution of "authentic" national identity, racial hierarchy, and the rightness of settler colonialism. Canadian Club concludes with a consideration of alternative approaches to forming political communities. Ultimately, it asks whether birth-based citizenship is the best we can do and what a more democratic and socially just alternative might look like.

Can universal human rights and different national citizenship regimes ever be compatible? This book argues that they can't, setting out a legal-philosophical critique of the tension between both. It explores whether the emergence of postnational models of citizenship that aim at decoupling human rights and citizenship succeed in overcoming tensions between the universal (multiculturalism; universal human rights; postnational values) and the particular (citizenship; borders; national values and diverse local narratives). As a result of this exploration, the author argues that it is illegitimate to speak of universal human rights, universal human dignity, or universal social justice. It is only by recognising this reality that a much needed transformation of human rights and citizenship can be undertaken in a meaningful way. This provocative and compelling work will appeal to both human rights and citizenship lawyers, as well as others involved in human rights law at NGOs, governments, international organisations – and indeed anyone with an interest in the subject of how human rights evolved and new concepts for the future.

Winner of the Hugo and Nebula Awards for best novel Four travelers come to the ringworld. . . Louis Wu: human and old; bored with having lived too fully for far too many years. Seeking a challenge, and all too capable of handling it. Nessus: a trembling coward, a puppeteer with a built-in survival pattern of nonviolence. Except that this particular puppeteer is insane. Teela Brown: human; a wide-eyed youngster with no allegiances, no experience, no abilities. And all the luck in the world. Speaker-To-Animals: kzin; large, orange-furred, and carnivorous. And one of the most savage life-forms known in the galaxy. Why did these disparate individuals come together? How could they possibly function together? And where, in the name of anything sane, were they headed?

This book examines a stringent problem of current migration societies—whether or not to extend citizenship to resident migrants. Undocumented migration has been an active issue for many decades in the USA, and became a central concern in Europe following the Mediterranean migrant crisis. In this innovative study based on the basic principles of transnational citizenship law and the naturalization pattern around the world, Matias purports that it is possible to determine that no citizen in waiting should be permanently excluded from citizenship. Such a proposition not only imposes a positive duty overriding an important dimension of sovereignty but it also gives rise to a discussion about undocumented migration. With its transnational law focus, and cases from public international law courts, European courts and national courts, Citizenship as a Human Right: The Fundamental Right to a Specific Citizenship may be applied to virtually anywhere in the world.

A critical assessment from the perspective of political and legal theory of how shifting borders impact on migration, mobility and the protection of displaced persons

In Ius Doni in International Law and EU Law, Dr. Christian H. Kälin establishes the concept of ius doni as one of the latest trends of acquisition of citizenship by investment, quickly spreading among states.