The birthright lottery : citizenship and global inequality / Ayelet Shachar.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 235-261) and index.

Introduction : the puzzle of birthright citizenship -- Reconceptualizing membership : citizenship as inherited property -- Abolishing versus resurrecting borders : moving beyond the binary options -- A new basis for global redistribution : the birthright privilege levy -- Blood and soil : birthright citizenship in the domestic arena -- Popular defenses of birthright citizenship and their limitations -- Curtailing inheritance : towards a jus nexi membership allocation principle.

This book offers a bold new perspective for making sense and thinking critically about the problematic persistence of birthright citizenship laws; Shachar argues that these laws cast the transfer membership entitlement as a complex form of inherited property. This shift in perspective underscores the significance of inherited membership as a distributor - or denier - of opportunity on a global scale. It also highlights the acute problem of an unburdened intergenerational transmission of privilege. Shachar responds to these challenges, arguing that it is time to move beyond our outdated notions of blood-and-soil in sculpting the body politic. She also recommends a global redistributive levy on the perpetual transmission of membership - with the aim of ameliorating its most glaring opportunity inequalities. Uniquely located at the intersection of law, economics, and political philosophy, The Birthright Lottery deploys a strikingly creative framework for understanding citizenship as inherited property. Shachar crafts new legal concepts and innovative institutional designs to promote global justice and democratic legitimacy, in a move to mitigate the steep and dramatic disparities that attach to birthright citizenship in today's world.

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