Territorial Conflict and Territorial Rights: The Crimean Question Reconsidered By Ayelet Banai Abstract This article focuses on contemporary theories of territorial rights in political and legal philosophy and explores their implications for the case of Crimea, focusing on three main accounts of territorial rights: Liberal nationalist, Lockean, and Kantian. The article advances the legal-political account of the "people" and its territorial rights as a promising approach to theorizing the corporate agents that have potentially valid territorial rights and claims. While normative theory does not yield a single unequivocal judgment that identifies one claimant as the solely justified territorial right-holder in Crimea, the application of general principles of territorial rights theory can help identify the pertinent considerations for the case, which clarify the normative implications of each potential resolution. While no party has an absolutely just territorial claim to Crimea, this article offers a qualified defense of the existence of a distinct "Crimean people," defined by the distinct political history of Crimea and its long-standing legacy of autonomous legal-political institutions, which may constitute a shared political project for the culturally diverse population. A. Introduction Despite claims to the contrary, the recent secession of Crimea from Ukraine and its subsequent incorporation into the Russian Federation find little justification in the international legal norms of self-determination. Even if an international legal right of peoples to self-determination exists outside of colonial contexts, 2 it does not include a general right to secede (i.e., the right to "external self-determination" in the form of independent statehood). The doctrine of "remedial secession," which defends a right to secede as a remedy of "last resort" for sub-state groups that are subject to severe Departmrent of Government and Political Theory, School of Political Science, The University of Haifa. Haifa, Israel. Email: abanai@poll.haifa.ac.il. 1 Anatoly Kapustin, Crimea's Self-Determination in the Light of Contemporary international Law, 75 HEIDELBERG J. INT'L L. 101 (2015). I ANTONIO CASSESE, SELF-DETERMINATION OF PEOPLES: A LEGAL REAPPRAISAL, 37-66 (1995); DAVID RAIC, STATEHOOD AND THE LAW OF SELF-DETERMINATION 226-42 (2002); Robert McCorquodale, Self-Determination: A Human Rights Approach, 43 INT'L & COMP. L. Q. 857, 860 (2012).