Nationalists hold that the state derives its territorial rights from the prior claim of a cultural nation to territory. This article develops an alternative account: the legitimate state theory. This view holds that a state has rights to territory if it meets the following four conditions: (a) it effectively implements a system of law regulating property in that territory; (b) its subjects have a legitimate claim to occupy the territory; (c) the state's system of law "rules in the name of the people," by protecting basic rights and providing for political participation; and (d) the state is not a usurper.

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What gives a particular state the right to exercise jurisdiction and enforcement power over a particular territory? Why does the state of Denmark have rights over the territory of Denmark, and not over the territory of Sweden, and vice versa? This paper first considers a popular argument that purports to ground state territorial rights in citizens' rights of land ownership. On this view, the state has jurisdiction over territory insofar as its people owns the territory, and delegates jurisdictional powers over their land to the state. It is argued that we should reject this approach, because it is unable to explain: (a) how the state can establish a continuous territory; (b) why later generations consent to the state's jurisdiction; and (c) why non-consenting property owners cannot secede.Rather than considering state jurisdiction to be derived from the people's prior property rights, this paper claims that we should consider state jurisdictional rights over territory to be primitive. It defends an alternative Kantian account of territorial rights. On this view, a state's claim to jurisdiction over territory is justified if that state imposes a system of property law that meets certain basic conditions of legitimacy. This Kantian approach, it is argued, allows us to make better sense of state territorial rights.

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The idea of self-determination was first popularized by Woodrow Wilson, who conceived it as an extension of the doctrine-enshrined in the US Declaration of Independence-that governments derive "their just powers from the consent of the governed." 1 A corollary of this principle, he argued, was that "no nation should seek to extend its polity over any other nation or people, but every people should be left free to determine its own polity, its own way of development…" 2 No territorial annexations should be made without consulting the people, since "no right anywhere exists to hand people about from sovereignty to sovereignty as if they were property." 3 Since Wilson's time, the self-determination principle has come to play a major role in international law. Article 1(2) of the UN Charter states its "respect for the principle of equal rights and self-determination of peoples." 4 Both 1966 international human rights covenants proclaim that "all peoples have the right of self-determination," by virtue of which "they freely determine their political status and freely pursue their economic, social, and cultural development." 5 Self-determination also plays a leading role in the 1960 UN Resolution on the Independence of Colonial Peoples and the 1970 UN Declaration on Friendly Relations among States. We can define self-determination, in a preliminary way, as a community's right to choose its own governmental arrangements and international standing. Unless a people decides though its own