Comment on Michael Doyle's Tanner lectures

Abstract

I find myself in the awkward position – awkward, that is, for a commentator – of agreeing with virtually all aspects of Michael Doyle’s powerful critique of what international law and current US doctrine imply about preventive war, and with most of his constructive suggestions for a new set of laws, institutions, and policies for addressing threats to national and international security that seem both real and serious but are not imminent. Yet, although what he says is largely right, there is more to be said. There is an important moral constraint on preventive war that he largely overlooks (though it is faintly indicated in his early reference to a “responsible party” condition for justified selfdefense), and that fails to appear in his list of criteria for justified preventive action. I propose to devote these brief remarks to supplying the condition that is omitted from his account but that needs to be included.

Links

PhilArchive



    Upload a copy of this work     Papers currently archived: 90,593

External links

  • This entry has no external links. Add one.
Setup an account with your affiliations in order to access resources via your University's proxy server

Through your library

  • Only published works are available at libraries.

Analytics

Added to PP
2009-01-28

Downloads
7 (#1,201,127)

6 months
0

Historical graph of downloads
How can I increase my downloads?

Author's Profile

Jeff McMahan
Oxford University

Citations of this work

No citations found.

Add more citations

References found in this work

No references found.

Add more references