Book Launch and Roundtable
University of Toronto, Faculty of Law
LEGAL THEORY WORKSHOP SERIES
presents
Roundtable on
The Birthright Lottery: Citizenship and Global Inequality
(Harvard University Press, 2009)
By Ayelet Shachar
To be followed by book signing by the author
Participants:
Rogers Smith, University of Pennsylvania, Political Science, author of Civic Ideals
James Orbinski, University of Toronto, Faculty of Medicine, author of An Imperfect Offering
Christina Rodriguez, NYU/Harvard, co-editor of Immigration and Refugee Law & Policy
Melissa Williams (Moderator), Centre for Ethics, author of Voice, Trust and Memory
12:30 – 2:00
Friday, January 15, 2010
Classroom A (room FLA) – Flavelle House
78 Queen’s Park
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 She deploys this fresh perspective to establish that nations need to expand their membership boundaries beyond outdated notions of blood-and-soil in sculpting the body politic.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.
Ayelet Shachar is Professor of Law and Political Science at the University of Toronto, where she holds the Canada Research Chair in Citizenship and Multiculturalism. She has published extensively on citizenship theory, immigration law, women’s rights and religious diversity. She is the author of Multicultural Jurisdictions: Cultural Differences and Women’s Rights (Cambridge 2001), for which she won the APSA Best First Book Award. This work has proved influential, intervening in actual public policy and legislative debates. It was cited, most recently, by England’s Archbishop of Canterbury and the Supreme Court of Canada. Her new book, The Birthright Lottery: Citizenship and Global Inequality (2009), has recently been published by Harvard University Press.
A light lunch will be served.
