A Presumptive Right to Exclude: From Imposed Obligations To A Viable Threshold
Benedikt Buechel
Global Politics Review
Vol. 3, no. 1 (April 2017): 98-108.
DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.1238505
GPR ID: 2464-9929_v03_i01_p098
Published: 29 April 2017
ABSTRACT: In “Immigration, Jurisdiction and Exclusion”, Michael Blake develops a new line of argument to defend a state’s presumptive right to exclude would-be immigrants. His account grounds this right on the state as a legal community that must protect and fulfill human rights. Although Blake’s present argument is valid and attractive in being less arbitrary than national membership and in distinguishing different types of immigrants’ claims, I dismiss it for being unsound due to a lack of further elaboration. The reason for my rejection is that there is a fundamental problem with the third premise as it stands now. Therefore, I contend that Blake’s argument cannot justify a general exclusion of well-protected would-be immigrants. However, in the final part, I will try to defend a modified version of Blake’s argument from imposed obligations by contending that a state has a presumptive right to exclude if the human rights obligations that are imposed on its residents go beyond a viable threshold.
Keywords: Immigration, right to exclude, global justice, human rights, Michael Blake.
Copyright by the Author. This is an Open Access article licensed by Global Politics Review under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 License 
. // Disclaimer: the copyright and license of this article changed on October 30, 2017, when GPR became Open Access. The PDF file has not been updated for archival purposes. //
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