Research Overview

Much of my current research focuses on normative questions about international law, which I think of as the intersection between political philosophy, normative economics, and jurisprudence. I am currently working on a book-length project, generously supported in part by the Social Science & Humanities Research Council of Canada, that explores what grounds the legitimacy of international law. 

Starting with an appreciation that international law is legitimate to the extent that it protects sovereignty, I argue the dominant Westphalian norm of non-interference is neither necessary nor sufficient for meaningful sovereignty. Drawing instead on the Republican tradition, I present and defend a conception of sovereignty as non-domination, or simply independence from the arbitrary power of another in their potential to interfere even if they never actually interfere. Nonetheless deviating from fellow neo-Republicans, I argue that the domination of states does not reduce to the domination of citizens and sovereignty of states does not entail the freedom of citizens. However, this ‘Irreducibility Thesis’ raises the question: if not to promote human freedom, why protect the sovereignty of states? Identifying Kant’s notion of Rechtlicher Zustand [rightful condition] as the constitutive aim of international law, where (state) rights are a bona fide right instead of ‘precarious provisional’ holdings as in the global state of nature, I argue non-domination is necessary and sufficient for attaining this end. This grounds de jure legitimacy by generating reasons for acting, and de facto legitimate by promoting global stability among states with a vested interest in avoiding chaos.