Applied Ethics Forum: Kristina Meshelski

The Applied Ethics Forum is pleased to sponsor the following Colloquium on Thursday February 23rd 2017. Please also see the Forum’s schedule of events for additional information.

Colloquium

3:30pm-5:00pm    ‘Calexit from a Social Contract Perspective’ by Kristina Meshelski (Cal State Northridge), Room PH1–108

Abstract: There is a recently renewed interest in California seceding from the United States and becoming a new nation (aka Calexit). Public debate about Calexit typically takes the form of simply weighing the pros and cons for Californians from a self-interested rather than a moralized perspective. But would Calexit be fair? I develop a social contract account to help answer this question. My account differs from previous philosophical treatments of secession from a social contract perspective, because on my account, the relevant question is not merely whether the larger nation has broken a tenet of the social contract that would allow its inhabitants to break away. Rather, on my account the rights and duties Californians share with the rest of the United States pre-exist and would persist if we seceded. 

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