Manipulation and liability to defensive harm

Philosophers working on the morality of harm have paid surprisingly little attention to the problem of manipulation. The aim of this paper is to remedy this lacuna by exploring how liability to defensive harm is affected by the fact that someone posing an unjust threat has been manipulated into doing so. In addressing this problem, the challenge is to answer the following question: Why should it be the case (if it is, indeed, the case) that being misled into posing an unjust threat by manipulation makes a difference to one’s liability, as compared to being misled into doing so by natural events or by someone’s honest attempt to persuade us? To answer this question, I first outline an account of manipulation and then use it to defend what I shall call the “Pre-emption Principle.”

Content-independence and natural-duty theories of political obligation

This paper contends that the requirement of content independence poses a pressing challenge to natural-duty theories of political obligation, for it is unclear why subjects of a state should not discharge the background natural duty in proper ways other than obeying the law. To demonstrate the force of this challenge, I examine and refute three argumentative strategies to achieve content independence represented in recent notable natural-duty theories: by appealing to the epistemic advantages of the state in discharging a natural duty, by claiming that one’s denial of state authority necessarily poses an unjust threat to other people, and by invoking the consideration of fairness (or impartiality) to preempt one’s discretion in discharging a natural duty. My criticisms, I believe, provide sufficient reasons for natural-duty theorists to take the requirement of content independence much more seriously.

Defensive Liability

This chapter aims to identify four common mistakes about defensive liability. Two excellent books on the ethics of defense and war, Helen Frowe’s Defensive Killing and Jeff McMahan’s Killing in War, are used to provide examples of each of the four mistakes. The first mistake is the failure to recognize that defensive liability requires an unjust threat in the sense of a threat to a right or a threat that infringes upon a right. The second is the failure to recognize that defensive liability requires posing (or taking part in a group’s posing) an unjust threat, as opposed to merely contributing to an unjust threat. The third is the failure to recognize that defensive liability requires not merely posing an unjust threat but also being more responsible than the potential victim for the threat one poses. The fourth is the mistake of thinking that defensive liability requires an objective threat.

Who Should Die?

This academic text brings together, in one volume, the most recent and innovative accounts of liability to harm in war. The concept of liability has become a crucial wedge issue within the military ethics community, as the claim that combatants are morally equal has come under withering criticism. Scholars have been exploring the various causal factors that underlie a person’s liability to be intentionally targeted with potentially lethal violence—such as her culpable contribution to an unjust threat. These new categories of liability cut across the old equality of combatants, suggesting that not all soldiers are equally liable to harm, and that even civilians can be liable to harm. This text offers a “who’s who” of contemporary scholars working on and rigorously debating the major ethical questions surrounding killing in war, including liability to harm, rights theory, self-defense, selective conscientious objection, obligations toward civilians, and autonomous weapons. This volume collects, expands upon, and provides new and updated analyses of these concepts that have yet to be captured in a single work. As a convenient and authoritative collection of such discussions, this title is uniquely and well suited for university-level teaching and as a scholarly reference for ethicists, policymakers, and other stakeholders.

Duty and Liability

In his recent book, Killing in War, Jeff McMahan sets out a number of conditions for a person to be liable to attack, provided the attack is used to avert an objectively unjust threat: (1) The threat, if realized, will wrongfully harm another; (2) the person is responsible for creating the threat; (3) killing the person is necessary to avert the threat, and (4) killing the person is a proportionate response to the threat. The present article focuses on McMahan's second condition, which links liability with responsibility. McMahan's use of the responsibility criterion, the article contends, is too restrictive as an account of liability in general and an account of liability to be killed in particular. In order to defend this claim, the article disambiguates the concept of liability and explores its role in the philosophical analysis of the permission to cause harm to others.

Self-Defence, Necessity and Duress: Understanding the Relationship

The distinctions that may be drawn between self-defence, necessity and duress are interesting as a matter of theory, but may also be important in practice. In some jurisdictions, for example, duress and necessity are no defence to murder whereas self-defence is a defence available in principle to all crimes. In such jurisdictions, in homicide cases, the point at which one reaches the boundaries of self-defence and enters upon the terrain of necessity may thus be of crucial significance. Drawing on Suzanne Uniacke’s theory of self-defence, I would like to suggest that each defence can be distinguished by a different key issue. In necessity cases, the key issue is the moral imperative to act: what matters is whether in the circumstances it was morally imperative to act, even if this might involve the commission of wrongdoing, in order to negate or avoid some other evil. In duress cases, the key issue is the personal sacrifice D is being asked to make: should D be expected to make the personal sacrifice involved in refusing to give in to a coercive threat, rather than avoid implementation of the coercive threat by doing wrong? In self-defence cases, the key issue is D’s legal permission to act: where V unjustly represented a threat to D (normally, although not exclusively, through his—V’s—conduct), the question is whether necessary and proportionate steps were taken by D to negate or avoid the threat. For, D has a legal permission to take necessary and proportionate steps to negate or avoid an unjust threat, even if (exceptionally) these involve the use of lethal force. So baldly stated, the differences between the defences may seem obvious. Few common law jurisdictions, and few commentators, however, have appreciated the full significance of the differences, as we shall shortly see.