Reply to critics

In this reply, Moore addresses the central criticisms of her theory which have been advanced by Bachvarova, Carens, Catala, and Kolers. It argues that the concept of 'people' is not irreducibly subjective, nor is her theory normatively statist. These criticisms rest on a misunderstanding of her theory. She defends the methodological commitment to examining the self-determination argument for territory and arriving at its limits through objections largely based on justice. She defends her threshold for conferring territorial rights on people, which is connected to the relational morality that underpins her account, and to an understanding of the kind of group that has the capacity to exercise territorial jurisdiction and address disagreements that are likely to arise with the exercise of wide-ranging political authority.