This paper argues that voters have duties of political justice to rectify imperfections in the democratic process, specifically unjust exclusions from the suffrage. The basis for such duties is that voters benefit from unjust suffrage exclusions and therefore have special duties to rectify them. In order to show that these duties apply to all voters, the paper explains the relevant sense in which all voters benefit from unjust exclusions from the vote. Next, the paper specifies the claim that benefitting from injustice grounds rectificatory duties, how this applies to voters, and how they can discharge their duties through the vote, either by restituting electoral injustices, compensating their victims or by disgorging the benefits they unjustly derive from electoral injustice.

This paper engages two claims defended by Axel Gosseries in What is intergenerational justice. The first is that the demands of democratic legitimacy cannot be met in the political relations between present and future people because future people cannot authorize decisions made today. In response, I cast doubt on the necessity of authorization for democratic legitimacy. Representative claims can, in some cases, be legitimate by democratic standards even if they are not authorized. The second claim advanced by Gosseries is that democratic legitimacy applies to the relations between present and future people since future people are governed by the decisions made today. Contrary to Gosseries, I argue that the imposition of burdens is neither sufficient nor necessary for decisions to govern others. Instead, the paper argues that de facto authority is the more relevant condition and that intergenerational relations of de facto authority are unlikely ever to obtain.

Previous literature explains the fact that sub-national elections tend to be more inclusive than national elections by reference to the level of the election. This paper argues that the constitutional status of the election is more decisive. This is illustrated by evidence from the British Overseas Territories (BOTs) where resident citizens without ‘belonger’ status are excluded from the vote. Elections in BOTs are less inclusive because they are significant to the future constitutional status of the territory. Finally, the paper considers the implications of our thesis for the ongoing dispute on belongership between the UK and BOTs.

This paper examines the legitimacy of extraterritorial border controls, specifically maritime interceptions, through the lens of state authority. It argues that legitimacy requires de facto authority, which states may not always possess over migrants intercepted in international waters. Drawing on Raz’s theory of authority, the paper distinguishes between weak and strong conceptions of de facto authority and evaluates whether states meet these conditions during maritime interceptions. The analysis suggests that while states claim legal authority through domestic and international law, their authority is often not recognized by migrants, thus failing the strong conception of de facto authority. Consequently, maritime interceptions may not constitute legitimate or illegitimate exercises of authority but rather acts of brute power. The paper also explores how international law claims authority over state actions and its limitations in governing extraterritorial border controls. The findings challenge conventional views on state legitimacy and propose that intercepted migrants may not be bound by state directives, raising important ethical and legal implications for migration governance.

States increasingly regulate migration by the creation of waiting zones where the migrant is denied access to asylum and non-refoulement. Waiting zones are often described as legal black holes from which the state has withdrawn legal authority. So characterized, the governance of migration through waiting zones poses a challenge to the applicability of standards of legitimate authority. If authority is legitimate or illegitimate only when exercised, and if the state has withdrawn the exercise of authority in waiting zones, it appears to follow that waiting zones cannot be evaluated by standards of legitimate authority.

In response, this paper argues that as long as the state possesses the authority to regulate the conduct of the person, her conduct is governed by “deflecting reasons” that are third-order reasons not to act on reasons determined by the authority. Given that a person is subject to authority whenever she is subject to practical reasons determined by the authority, it follows that a person subject to deflecting reasons is subject to authority, even if there is no duty to comply with it. The significance of this claim is that migrants in the waiting zone remain subject to the authority claimed by the state even though the state claims not to exercise authority over migrants present therein. It is therefore in order to hold states to account by regular standards of legitimate authority also in waiting zones.

Machine learning algorithms (ML) are increasingly used to support decision-making in the exercise of public authority. Here, we argue that an important consideration has been overlooked in previous discussions: whether the use of ML undermines the democratic legitimacy of public institutions. From the perspective of democratic legitimacy, it is not enough that ML contributes to efficiency and accuracy in the exercise of public authority, which has so far been the focus in the scholarly literature engaging with these developments. According to one influential theory, exercises of administrative and judicial authority are democratically legitimate if and only if administrative and judicial decisions serve the ends of the democratic law maker, are based on reasons that align with these ends and are accessible to the public. These requirements are not satisfied by decisions determined through ML since such decisions are determined by statistical operations that are opaque in several respects. However, not all ML-based decision support systems pose the same risk, and we argue that a considered judgment on the democratic legitimacy of ML in exercises of public authority need take the complexity of the issue into account. This paper outlines considerations that help guide the assessment of whether a ML undermines democratic legitimacy when used to support public decisions. We argue that two main considerations are pertinent to such normative assessment. The first is the extent to which ML is practiced as intended and the extent to which it replaces decisions that were previously accessible and based on reasons. The second is that uses of ML in exercises of public authority should be embedded in an institutional infrastructure that secures reason giving and accessibility.

Extraterritorial border controls prevent migrants from arriving at the territory of the state and effectively undermine rights to apply for asylum and protections against non-refoulement. As a result, a wealth of scholarship argues that external border controls are illegitimate exercises of state power. This paper challenges two versions of this argument, first, the claim that carrier-sanctions are illegitimate because they subject migrants to morally impermissible forms of coercion and, second, the claim that carrier-sanctions are illegitimate because they subject migrants to illegitimate claims to authority.

Against coercion-based accounts of legitimacy, this paper defends the view that while carrier-sanctions are coercive, the coerciveness of a policy is not relevant to its legitimacy. What is relevant is instead whether the authority claimed by the state is legitimate. Against authority-based accounts, this paper argues that states are unable to claim authority in the relevant sense over migrants that are present in the territories of other states.

The paper concludes by suggesting that the charge that carrier-sanctions are illegitimate should shift towards the state that allows carriers to enforce these policies on their territories. No state has the legitimate authority to permit other states to pressure carriers to prevent migrants in need of protection from travelling. The state that introduces carrier-sanction legislation, on the other hand, is not exercising illegitimate authority though they may act contrary to demands of justice.