Does recognition of the basic human right to subsistence imply that the needy are morally permitted to take and use other peoples property to get out of their plight? Should we respect the exercise of this right of necessity in a variety of scenarios from street pickpocketing and petty theft to illegal squatting and encamping?

In this concise and accessible book, Alejandra Mancilla addresses these complex and controversial moral questions. The book presents a historical account of the concept of the right of necessityfrom the medieval writings of Christian canonists and theologians to seventeenth century natural law theory. The author then goes on to ground this right in a minimal conception of basic human rights, and proposes some necessary and jointly sufficient conditions for its exercise. She confronts the main objections that may be posed against this principle and ultimately concludes that the exercise of this right should be considered as a trigger to secure a minimum threshold of welfare provisions for everyone, everywhere.

Alejandra Mancilla is a postdoctoral researcher at the Centre for the Study of Mind in Nature (CSMN), University of Oslo, Norway. She is the co-editor ofTheories of Justice (2012), and her articles have appeared, among others, in theJournal of Political Philosophy, Res Publica,the Journal of Applied Philosophy,and theCritical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy.

Acknowledgments/ 1. Reviving the Right of Necessity /Part I: Historical Accounts of the Right of Necessity / 2. The Right of Necessity as a Retreat to the Right of Common Use / 3. The Right of Necessity and the Pull of Self-preservation /Part II: The Right of Necessity and Global Poverty / 4. Justifying the Right of Necessity / 5. Content, Form and Conditions / 6. The Overdemandingness Objection / 7. The Right of Necessity within Moral Cosmopolitanism / Bibliography / Index