ABSTRACT
It is a commonplace of political history that, at some times in some places, liberalism and nationalism have not been incompatible. Nationalism is associated with passion because its imperatives are inherently particularistic. Liberalism, in contrast, is associated with reason because its imperatives are universalistic. This chapter focuses on territorial claims. Rights against murder and assault have immediate restrictive implications for the conduct of nations' military activities, many of which implications have long been explored in the literature on just wars and enshrined in various international conventions. Rights to freedom of contract pretty straightforwardly underwrite free trade and proscribe all manner of restrictions on it. Since nations' territories are aggregations of their members' real estate holdings, the validity of their territorial claims rests on the validity of those land titles. So nations wishing to sustain the legitimacy of their jurisdiction over these bits of real estate have to ensure that those titles retain their validity.
