Chris Bertram

Liberal egalitarian political philosophers have often argued that private property is a legal convention dependent on the state and that complaints about taxation from entitlement theorists are therefore based on a conceptual mistake. But our capacity to grasp and use property concepts seems too embedded in human nature for this to be correct. This essay argues that many standard arguments that property is constitutively a legal convention fail, but that the opposition between conventionalists and natural rights theorists is outmoded. In doing this, the essay draws on recent literature in evolutionary biology and psychology. Even though modern property in a complex society involves legal conventions, those conventions should be sensitive to our natural dispositions concerning ownership.

Justifications for state authority are typically directed towards the good of those subject to that authority. But, because of their territorial nature, states exercise coercion not only towards insiders but also towards non-members. Such coercion can take the form of denying outsiders the right to enter a territory or to settle in it permanently, as well as various restraints on trade and association. When coercion is directed at insiders, it often comes packaged with various claims about distributive justice, including claims to the effect that being subject to coercion entitles citizens to certain distributive guarantees (social minimum, difference principle). This paper asks three questions: can states acquire the moral right to coerce non-citizens (including in the form of a denial of the right to traverse or enter territory)? are outsiders ever morally bound to submit to the commands of states along these lines? does the right coercively to exclude outsiders bring with it any distributive obligations similar to those entailed by the state’s subjection of co-citizens? The possibility that a right to exclude must be coupled with a duty of compensation to those excluded will be canvassed.

Rousseau's _Social Contract _is a benchmark in political philosophy and has influenced moral and political thought since its publication. _Rousseau and the Social Contract _introduces and assesses: *Rousseau's life and the background of the _Social Contract _*The ideas and arguments of the _Social Contract _*Rousseau's continuing importance to politics and philosophy _Rousseau and the Social Contract _will be essential reading for all students of philosophy and politics, and anyone coming to Rousseau for the first time.