Contested territories and corrective justice

Abstract

This piece discusses the account of contested territories and of corrective justice Moore offers in A Political Theory of Territory. In Chapter 6, Moore offers an occupancy account of boundary-drawing. My discussion focuses on the status of Moore’s occupancy account compared to the statist and nationalist accounts it aims to replace. Specifically, I consider whether these other accounts are as unsuccessful as Moore suggests, and whether Moore’s account is as distinct from these accounts as she suggests. In Chapter 7, Moore offers a distinction between three different types of rights violations involved in the unjust taking of territory, and considers potential remedies for each. My discussion focuses on the arguments Moore advances to justify the presence or absence of certain remedies, in particular, the right of return and the redistribution of land. I conclude that the territorial claims of historically wronged groups are too quickly dismissed, and I suggest that this is problematic from the point of view of Moore’s own account.

Catala, A. (2018). «Contested Territories and Corrective Justice», Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy, vol. 21, no 6, p. 790-797.