Introduction

This introductory chapter of the book explains the background behind the territorial paradigm in human rights law and the relevance of discussing the legality and legitimacy of extraterritorial human rights obligations. It formulates the impetus as well as the research hypothesis behind it, underlining the lack of a firm normative grounding of extraterritorial human rights obligations and the corresponding need to develop a justificatory theory of these obligations. The chapter outlines the focus and structure of the book and demarcates it from other debates.