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The Mechanics of Claims and Permissible Killing in War

The Mechanics of Claims and Permissible Killing in War

Author: Alec D. Walen
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 9780190872045
Published In: June 2019
Format: Hardback
Jurisdiction: U.S. ? Disclaimer:
Countri(es) stated herein are used as reference only

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According to the dominant account of rights, there are two ways to permissibly kill people: they have done something to forfeit their right to life, or their rights are outweighed by the significantly greater cost of respecting them. Contemporary just war theorists tend to agree that it is difficult to justify killing in the second way. Thus, they focus on the conditions under which rights might be forfeited. But it has proven hard to defend an account of forfeiture that permits killing when and only when it is morally justifiable.

In The Mechanics of Claims and Permissible Killing in War, Alec D. Walen develops an alternative account of rights according to which rights forfeiture has a much smaller role to play. It plays a smaller role because rights themselves are more contextually contingent. They systematically reflect the different kinds of claims people can make on an agent. For example, those who threaten to cause harm without a right to do so have weaker claims not to be killed than innocent bystanders or those who have a right to threaten to cause harm. By framing rights as the output of a balance of competing claims, and by laying out a detailed account of how to balance competing claims, Walen provides a more coherent account of when killing in war is permissible.

Chapter 1: Introduction

Chapter 2: Basic Premises and Method

Chapter 3: A Theory of Rights

Chapter 4: Putting the Mechanics of Claims in Perspective

Chapter 5: Avoiding a Misplaced Emphasis on Intentions

Chapter 6: Innocent Threats versus Innocent Bystanders

Chapter 7: From Innocent Threats to Innocently Aiding Unjust Combatants

Chapter 8: Negative Agent-Claims and the Agent-Patient Inference

Chapter 9: Intervening Agency and the Right of Non-Sacrifice

Chapter 10: Conclusions

Bibliography

Table of Cases