The Right to Wage Private Wars of Subsistence

2021 ◽  
pp. 133-150
Author(s):  
Johan Olsthoorn
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Global Justice ◽  
Just War ◽  
Just War Theory ◽  
Legitimate Authority ◽  
Grounding Resistance ◽  
Basic Rights ◽  
Central Tenet ◽  
Just War Doctrine ◽  
The Right

Some philosophers have recently argued for the revisionist just war doctrine that individuals can have the right to initiate war in defense of their human rights when their government fails in its duty to protect them. It was a central tenet of early modern just war theory, too, that when judicial recourse is not available, individuals are entitled to enforce their basic rights by force of war. How should we conceptualize such remedial rights to secure basic rights by armed force? And where to fit such rights within ethical theories of war? This chapter explores these questions by critically contrasting two ways to ground individual rights to wage so-called “private subsistence wars”: via “modern” duties of global justice and via “old” rights of necessity. I argue that the right-of-necessity model—for better or worse—can sidestep problems of indeterminate and underdetermined moral liability by grounding resistance rights in enforceable rights (of subsistence) rather than in enforceable duties (of global justice). My analysis thus charts normative implications of dispensing with the legitimate authority condition by analyzing what it means for rights and duties to be enforceable.

License to kill: is legitimate authority a requirement for just war?

2013 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 64-93 ◽  
Author(s):  
Magnus Reitberger
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Political Power ◽  
Just War ◽  
Just War Theory ◽  
Legitimate Authority ◽  
Self Defense ◽  
Privileged Status ◽  
The Right

In traditional just war theory, legitimate authority is regarded as a necessary requirement for war to be just. This article challenges this requirement by arguing that a right to wage war can be derived from the right to self-defense and the justifiability of exercising political power to protect basic human rights. Arguments for the legitimate authority-requirement are then surveyed and rejected as insufficient to defend the principle's privileged status. It is argued that just war theory does not need the legitimate authority-requirement and may benefit from its removal.

Justice, Jurisdiction, and Migration

2019 ◽  
pp. 67-93
Author(s):  
Michael Blake
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Country Of Origin ◽  
International Human Rights Law ◽  
Human Rights Law ◽  
International Human Rights ◽  
Positive Account ◽  
Basic Rights ◽  
International Human ◽  
And Migration ◽  
The Right

This chapter introduces the book’s positive account of the right to exclude. It grounds it in the limited and presumptive right to be free from being charged with the defense of another’s basic rights—when those rights are adequately protected in her country of origin. The chapter provides an argument for this jurisdictional ground, while showing that it is consonant with both the structure of international human rights law and consistent with the nature of states as political entities. This ground, moreover, is shown to be incapable of defending the sorts of exclusion found in political practice—which opens up the possibility of using that ground to criticize existing practices. The chapter ends by considering three forms of objection—the objections from expulsion, from reproduction, and from liberty—and shows how the jurisdictional method defended can overcome these concerns.

Intervening Agency and the Right of Non-Sacrifice

2019 ◽  
pp. 195-211
Author(s):  
Alec D. Walen
Keyword(s):  
Just War ◽  
Causal Structure ◽  
Just War Theory ◽  
Knowing That ◽  
Argument Proceeds ◽  
The Right ◽  
Primary Agent

This chapter argues for the extension of an idea from the previous chapter, that of a right of non-sacrifice. It argues that this right exists in certain cases of intervening agency: when the intervening agent presents the primary agent with a choice either to submit to suffering a harm or to resist, knowing that the intervening agent will then harm others. The argument proceeds in four parts. First, the chapter explains why such a case is puzzling; second, it dismisses two unsuccessful attempts to resolve the puzzle; third, it explains why intervening agency sometimes has the effect of changing the nature of the causal structure in which an agent acts, though noting as well that intervening agency is not unique in having that effect; and finally, it explores how these ideas might be relevant to just war theory and eliminative killing in that context.

scholarly journals Comparison of Maqasid al-Shari�ah asy-Syathibi and ibn �Ashur perspective of Usul al-Fiqh four mazhab

2020 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 185
Author(s):  
Alfa Syahriar ◽  
Zahrotun Nafisah
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Islamic Law ◽  
Human Life ◽  
Right To Life ◽  
Basic Rights ◽  
The World ◽  
Way Of Thinking ◽  
The Right

Islamic law is established to ensure that human interests related to basic rights inherent in their lives include: the right to life, descent, wealth, thought and respect, can be realized. According to the reality, the problems that arise related to these rights are very complex and sustainable. This consideration necessitates efforts to realize Islamic humanist law in the interests of human life. In Usul Fiqh there is the concept of maslahat, as a standard of how basic human rights can be ensured of their fullness and sustainability. And the theory of Maqashid al-Sharia is seen as quite effective in realizing benefit, which means it is a necessity to study the thoughts of al-Shathibi and Ibn Ashur, because both are seen as very influential figures in the development of Maqashid al-Sharia. Therefore, this study is intended to study in a qualitative-comparative way of thinking of the two figures using the Maqashid al-Sharia framework according to the Ulama of Ushul Fiqh of the Four Mazhab. The results of this study can be stated that the orientation of the theory of Maqashid al-Sharia according to al-Shathibi to realize the benefit of the world and the hereafter, while Ibn Ashur limits only the world. Furthermore, the theory of Maqashid al-Sharia al-Shathibi and Ibn Ashur in the review of Usul Fiqh of Four Mazhab can be stated still in the context permitted by Islamic Sharia.

Dimensions of Intentions

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Victor Tadros
Keyword(s):  
Just War ◽  
Just War Theory ◽  
Double Effect ◽  
Doctrine Of Double Effect ◽  
Military Action ◽  
Terror Bombing ◽  
The Right

This chapter partially defends the significance of intentions to permissibility against critics and explores some different views about their relevance by exploring a range of contexts in just war theory where views about the significance of intentions make a difference in our judgments about the permissibility of military action. It clarifies two components of the doctrine of double effect (DDE) and distinguishes different versions of it. It then compares the DDE with some competing explanations of the intuitive difference between terror bombing and tactical bombing, arguing that the DDE is an important component of the right overall view of the permissibility of killing in war.

Feminist Philosophy of Human Rights

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Diana Tietjens Meyers
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Global Justice ◽  
Feminist Philosophy ◽  
Bodily Integrity ◽  
Philosophical Work ◽  
Future Directions ◽  
Feminist Theories ◽  
Global North ◽  
The Right ◽  
Feminist Practice

This chapter offers an account of central issues and themes in feminist philosophical work on human rights, including examples of important contributions to this discussion, as well as current and future directions. Major feminist theories of the grounding of human rights are presented together with feminist critiques of human rights as a basis for feminist practice. Genocidal rape and the right to bodily integrity, the right to care and the care drain from the Global South to the Global North, and the feminization of poverty in the context of global justice are discussed in detail. Issues concerning women’s agency within diverse cultural contexts punctuate these discussions.

Introduction

2019 ◽  
pp. 1-20
Author(s):  
Alec D. Walen
Keyword(s):  
Just War ◽  
Just War Theory ◽  
Philosophical Work ◽  
Self Defense ◽  
Current State ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Right

Much contemporary just war theory is modeled on the theory of self-defense. The dominant account of rights used by people interested in the right of self-defense is doubly problematic: its internal tensions undermine the plausibility of the views people try to defend, and it is in some ways morally distorting. This book is primarily concerned with developing and then deploying a new account of rights, one that will put the discussion of the right to defend against threats on more solid footing. The introductory chapter covers four themes. First, to explain why the current state of just war theory calls for a new account of rights, the chapter traces a brief history of recent discussions of the right of self-defense. Second, the chapter describes when it is permissible to defend against threats. Third, it explains how this relates to current law and to other philosophical work on the topic. Finally, it sketches an outline of the rest of the book.

Internecine War Killings

Utilitas ◽  
2012 ◽  
Vol 24 (2) ◽  
pp. 214-236 ◽  
Author(s):  
CÉCILE FABRE
Keyword(s):  
Just War ◽  
Just War Theory ◽  
Recent Book ◽  
Interesting Issue ◽  
The Right ◽  
The Military ◽  
Self Defence

In his recent bookKilling in War, McMahan develops a powerful argument for the view that soldiers on opposite sides of a conflict are not morally on a par once the war has started: whether they have the right to kill depends on the justness of their war. In line with just war theory in general, McMahan scrutinizes the ethics of killing the enemy. In this article, I accept McMahan's account, but bring it to bear on the entirely neglected, but nevertheless interesting, issue of what the military call ‘blue-on-blue’ killings or, as I refer to such acts here, internecine war killings. I focus on the case of the soldier who is ordered by his officer, at gunpoint, to go into action or to kill innocent civilians, and who kills his officer in self-defence. I argue that, at the bar of McMahan's account of the right to kill in self-defence, the officer lacks a justification for attacking the soldier as a means of enforcing his order, and the soldier thus sometimes (but not always) has the right to kill his officer should the latter so act.

scholarly journals The ‘Right to Have Rights’ 65 Years Later: Justice Beyond Humanitarianism, Politics Beyond Sovereignty

2017 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Katherine Howard
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Global Justice ◽  
Global Scale ◽  
Global Politics ◽  
The Political ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Practical Application ◽  
Political Situation ◽  
Human Cost ◽  
The Right

Readers of Hannah Arendt’s now classic formulation of the statelessness problem in her 1951 book The Origins of Totalitarianism abound at a moment when the number of stateless peoples worldwide continues to rise exponentially. Along with statelessness, few concepts in Arendt scholarship have spawned such a volume of literature, and perhaps none have provoked as much interest outside of the field of philosophy, as ‘the right to have rights.’ Interpreting this enigmatic term exposes the heart of our beliefs about the nature of the political and has important consequences for how we practice politics on a global scale because it implicitly takes plural human beings, and not the citizen, as its subjects. Arendt’s conceptualization of this problem remains unsurpassed in its diagnosis of the political situation of statelessness, as well as its intimate description of the human cost of what she refers to as ‘world loss,’ a phenomenon that the prevailing human rights and global justice discourse does not take into account. And yet, as an alternative framework for thinking about global politics, the right to have rights resists easy interpretation, let alone practical application.

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