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Muniz-Fraticelli on Shachar on Birthright Citizenship

By Lawrence Solum

Victor M. Muniz-Fraticelli (McGill University) has posted When Too Much Isn't Enough on SSRN. Here is the abstract:

Despite its methodological and substantive merit, Ayelet Shachar?s argument in The Birthright Lottery is problematic first, because the analogy between entailed property and birthright citizenship is not as illustrative as Shachar intends it to be; second, because the mechanism of the birthright privilege levy is insufficient for addressing structural impediments to growth; and third, because the principle of ius nexi, while an important corrective to the principles of nationality that are currently dominant, will likely have effects both unnecessary and insufficient to correct the injustices that Shachar identifies.

For those not familiar with Shachar's book, here is a description:

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 She deploys this fresh perspective to establish that nations need to expand their membership boundaries beyond outdated notions of blood-and-soil in sculpting the body politic.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.

Full post as published by Legal Theory Blog on August 18, 2010 (boomark / email).