Deep Morality and the Laws of War

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeremy Waldron
Keyword(s):  
Armed Conflict ◽  
Legal Reform ◽  
Laws Of War ◽  
Jeff Mcmahan ◽  
Moral Critique ◽  
Deep Morality ◽  
The Way

It is important to reflect on the way we evaluate the laws and customs of armed conflict and the responsibilities we take on when we criticize and propose possible changes to them. These laws are not robust, and there is a danger that criticism may undermine their force while not providing effective alternatives. Moreover, in the area of armed conflict, it is easy to underestimate the pressures that a satisfactory set of norms has to respond to and easy to exaggerate the “merely” conventional character of such norms. Laws of war must be administrable in circumstances of fear, confusion, and violence and must include elements of technicality difficult to understand in philosophical terms. One of the most influential of recent laws of war revisionists, Jeff McMahan, acknowledges that his deep moral critique of existing norms of armed conflict does not necessarily yield a set of prescriptions for legal reform. This chapter extends McMahan’s and counsels the utmost caution in these critiques and re-examinations.

Concluding Remarks

2019 ◽  
pp. 181-200
Author(s):  
Yitzhak Benbaji ◽  
Daniel Statman
Keyword(s):  
The Other ◽  
Laws Of War ◽  
Rogue States ◽  
Self Interest ◽  
A Priority ◽  
Deep Morality ◽  
The One ◽  
Self Defence ◽  
Do So ◽  
The Way

In this chapter we offer some concluding remarks. We point to the limitations of contractarianism, to its advantages over revisionism, and to its practicality. We show that for contractarianism wars are not necessarily ‘moral tragedies’, as they are for revisionists because wars do not necessarily involve unavoidable wrongdoing. According to contractarianism, combatants participating in war can do so without violating the rights of either combatants or civilians of the enemy side. The chapter also shows how even revisionists rely at times on contractualist premises to justify adherence to rules which they regard as unjustified in terms of ‘deep morality’. We also criticize the way this notion is utilized, especially the distinction between ‘deep morality’ and non-deep morality (associated with compliance with the laws of war). The distinction creates the impression that one should give priority to considerations stemming from deep morality over those stemming from shallow morality. But clearly, even revisionists do not assume such a priority—neither in general, nor in the field of war. Finally, the chapter highlights the ‘realist’ aspect of contractarianism, namely, its scepticism about the termination of wars and warfare. This scepticism has to do with the existence of evil individuals and of rogue states, but also with benign self-interest coupled with epistemic shortcomings and a constant suspicion of others. Given this realist assumption, states would be better off agreeing on rules to regulate war that would, on the one hand, facilitate effective self-defence, while on the other, reduce the killing and harm they cause.

Part I: Conclusion

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tilman Rodenhäuser
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Civil War ◽  
Basic Principle ◽  
Armed Conflict ◽  
International Humanitarian Law ◽  
Humanitarian Law ◽  
Laws Of War ◽  
Connected Group ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Contemporary Practice

Analysing the development of the concept of non-state parties to an armed conflict from the writings of philosophers in the eighteenth century through international humanitarian law (IHL) treaty law to contemporary practice, three threads can be identified. First, as pointed out by Rousseau almost two and a half centuries ago, one basic principle underlying the laws of war is that war is not a relation between men but between entities. Accordingly, the lawful objective of parties cannot be to harm opponents as individuals but only to overcome the entity for which the individual fights. This necessitates that any party to an armed conflict is a collective, organized entity and not a loosely connected group of individuals. Second, de Vattel already stressed that civil war is fought between two parties who ‘acknowledge no common judge’ and have no ‘common superior’ on earth....

Of Rebels, Insurgents, and Belligerents

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tilman Rodenhäuser
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
Armed Conflict ◽  
Armed Conflicts ◽  
Laws Of War ◽  
Armed Group ◽  
State Practice

The first chapter opens the substantive analysis of the organization requirement for non-state parties to armed conflicts. First, it briefly examines why the laws of war have originally been state-focused, and shows how this state focus coined international law requirements of main characteristics of a party to an armed conflict. Second, it analyses how philosophers broadened the legal notion of ‘war’ as to include conflicts involving certain non-state entities. Subsequently, this chapter examines state practice to identify which qualities a non-state armed group needed to possess to obtain the ‘belligerent’ status. It also examines the question of which kind of entities could qualify as ‘insurgents’ or ‘rebels’.

The Geneva Convention of 1864 and the Brussels Conference of 1874

1974 ◽  
Vol 14 (163) ◽  
pp. 527-537 ◽  
Author(s):  
Danièle Bujard
Keyword(s):  
Armed Conflict ◽  
Human Life ◽  
Geneva Convention ◽  
Armed Conflicts ◽  
International Seminar ◽  
Laws Of War ◽  
Law Of War ◽  
The Law

The year 1974 marks the centennial of the International Declaration of Brussels on the Laws and Customs of War. This effort to codify the most important laws of war, undertaken on the initiative of Czar Alexander II of Russia, constituted a decisive stage in the development of the law of war. It is this event which the Committee for the Protection of Human Life in Armed Conflicts, under the patronage of the Belgian Government, proposes to commemorate by an international seminar on the theme “The Concept of International Armed Conflict—New Perspectives”, in December of this year.

Contingency in International Law

2021 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Natural Resources ◽  
International Law ◽  
Present State ◽  
Foreign Investment ◽  
Armed Conflict ◽  
The Past ◽  
Present Volume ◽  
State Of Affairs ◽  
The Way

This volume asks a question that is deceptive in its simplicity: Could international law have been otherwise? In other words, what were the past possibilities, if any, for a different law? The search for contingency in international law is often motivated, including in the present volume, by the refusal to accept the present state of affairs and by the hope that recovering possibilities of the past will facilitate a different future. The volume situates the search for contingency theoretically and within many fields of international law, such as human rights and armed conflict, migrants and refugees, the sea and natural resources, and foreign investment and trade. Today there is hardly a serious account that would consider the path of international law to be necessary and that would deny the possibility of a different law altogether. At the same time, however, behind every possibility of the past stands a reason – or reasons – why the law developed as it did. Those who embark in search of contingency soon encounter tensions when they want to recover past possibilities without downplaying patterns of determination and domination. Nevertheless, while warring critical sensibilities may point in different directions, only a keen sense of why things turned out the way they did makes it possible to argue about how they could plausibly have turned out differently.

Naming and Shaming the Bombers

2021 ◽  
pp. 185-210
Author(s):  
Michiel Hofman
Keyword(s):  
The State ◽  
International Humanitarian Law ◽  
Humanitarian Law ◽  
Laws Of War ◽  
Access To Services ◽  
Medecins Sans Frontieres ◽  
Médecins Sans Frontières ◽  
Naming And Shaming ◽  
The Way

This chapter recounts how Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) failed to turn the tide against the attacks on hospitals through its approach of naming and shaming the perpetrators of hospital bombings. It speculates that the failure to stop the attacks was either caused by the way in which the international humanitarian law (IHL) is wired to provide exemption for warring parties or MSF’s inability to deliver consistent messages necessary to generate pressure on offending nations. It also mentions the Syrian government’s denial of assistance to the population and disrespect to the laws of war that centered the state as both perpetrator and aid responder. The chapter looks at the Syrian government’s ability to deny and allow access to services that served to amplify its control and project its sovereignty. It elaborates how the Syrian state centered its own sovereign control by being the focus of diplomatic efforts to ensure humanitarian access.

The Limits of Human Rights in Times of Armed Conflict and Other Situations of Armed Violence

2019 ◽  
pp. 305-318
Author(s):  
Andrew Clapham
Keyword(s):  
At Risk ◽  
Human Rights ◽  
International Law ◽  
Armed Conflict ◽  
Human Rights Law ◽  
Armed Groups ◽  
Laws Of War ◽  
Competing Demands ◽  
The Face ◽  
Armed Violence

Human rights are said to be ill-adapted to times of armed conflict or for dealing with exceptional terrorist threats. Are human rights limited by the applicability of other branches of international law including the laws of war? Are there limits to the work human rights can usefully do in situations of threatened violence when their strict application is said to put lives at risk? This chapter tackles some of the contemporary arguments surrounding the limitations of human rights law in the face of the competing demands of winning the war and killing terrorists. It focuses on killings and detention inside and outside armed conflict. It also asks whether there are limits to the obligations we can impose on armed groups.

Monitoring Human Rights in Africa

1991 ◽  
Vol 29 (3) ◽  
pp. 505-510
Author(s):  
Richard Dicker
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Academic Freedom ◽  
Armed Conflict ◽  
Sub Saharan Africa ◽  
Laws Of War ◽  
Human Rights Abuses ◽  
Sub Saharan ◽  
New Evidence

Since its founding in May 1988, Africa Watch has documented and reported on human rights abuses in 13 countries in sub-Saharan Africa. These findings are available in eight book-length reports and more than 70 newsletters, with new evidence available all the time on such topics as, for example, the suppression of information in the Sudan, violations of laws of war in Liberia, the devastating impact of the 15-year armed conflict in Angola, slavery in Mauritania, and interference with academic freedom in Zimbabwe.

scholarly journals Evaluating the Revisionist Critique of Just War Theory

Daedalus ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 146 (1) ◽  
pp. 113-124 ◽  
Author(s):  
Seth Lazar
Keyword(s):  
Just War ◽  
Just War Theory ◽  
Laws Of War ◽  
Noncombatant Immunity ◽  
Jeff Mcmahan ◽  
Military Objective ◽  
The Military ◽  
Morality Of War ◽  
Modern Analytical

Modern analytical just war theory starts with Michael Walzer's defense of key tenets of the laws of war in his Just and Unjust Wars. Walzer advocates noncombatant immunity, proportionality, and combatant equality: combatants in war must target only combatants; unintentional harms that they inflict on noncombatants must be proportionate to the military objective secured; and combatants who abide by these principles fight permissibly, regardless of their aims. In recent years, the revisionist school of just war theory, led by Jeff McMahan, has radically undermined Walzer's defense of these principles. This essay situates Walzer's and the revisionists’ arguments, before illustrating the disturbing vision of the morality of war that results from revisionist premises. It concludes by showing how broadly Walzerian conclusions can be defended using more reliable foundations.

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