Necessity and proportionality in morality and law / Jeff McMahan
Document type:
Chapter
Title:
Necessity and proportionality in morality and law
Author zone:
Jeff McMahan
In:
Necessity and proportionality in international peace and security law
Editor:
Oxford : Oxford University Press, 2021
Physical description:
p. 3-38
Languages:
English
Abstract:
This chapter offers a systematic analysis of the notion of proportionality in both moral philosophy and law, particularly the law of armed conflict. Proportionality is a constraint on different forms of justification for harming people. There are thus different forms of proportionality corresponding to different types of justification. The proportionality constraint should not be conflated with a different constraint—the necessity constraint—which in turn must be carefully distinguished from necessity as a form of justification. The chapter explains how the proportionality constraint and the necessity constraint are distinguished by the different comparisons they require. It further explains the relations between the requirement of proportionality in jus ad bellum and the requirement of proportionality in jus in bello and argues that the criterion of proportionality in the law of jus in bello is actually incoherent. The final section elucidates the various matters of moral theory that are relevant to understanding how the requirement of proportionality applies in practice to the action of combatants who fight in just wars.
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| Call number | Availability / Due date |
|---|---|
| 345.25/ | See main document |