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What Is The Primary Right?, Carter Dillard

Carter Dillard

This essay develops a new human right derived from both domestic substantive due process and international political exit right doctrines, called the primary right, which is best described as a general human claim-right of reasonable access to wilderness. It is a first generation human rights approach to environmental protection, positing a “nonhuman” baseline environment which is a necessary condition for persons to a) be “let alone” by others, and b) withdraw consent to political association and exit any, and therefore all, polities.