The Right of Exit and its Temporal Limits

Since unqualified approaches prevail in the right of exit, this freedom is vulnerable to free rider abuse. When this occurs in legal proceedings, the legal order is put at risk. Therefore, drawing on cases from Indigenous law, I critique the prevailing views on the right to exit in multiculturalist literature and legal theory. In particular, I focus on Kukathas’s consensualist theory and the criterion of self-ascription, arguing that both provide weak explanations of political obligation. Finally, based on the principle of fair play and critical liberalism, I propose a new model to offer a satisfactory solution to these cases and justify temporal limits on the right to exit. This new model moves away from the characteristic individualism of the liberal approach in the other two theories and reclaims the value of Indigenous law without endorsing essentialist conceptions of culture.