Introduction

International law endows all individuals with a plethora of positive entitlements, their human rights. It also accords universal legal rights to various kinds of human groups, including groups labelled as "peoples". Moral arguments about human rights attempt to ground them on some relevant feature or features of human individuals such as their claims to be owners of themselves, or to be ends-in-themselves, or to be right bearers under natural law, and so forth. In arguing the case for a liberal form of nationalism, liberal political theorists deploy one or the other version of the individualistic approach to ground national self-determination as a moral right. The ethical significance of nationality is not simply a matter of the contested right of national self-determination, but is also the issue of what morally significant function or functions nationality may perform. It further involves the no less controversial question of the ethical significance of national boundaries in terms of duties to compatriots and to others.