Abstract

In _War By Agreement_, Yitzhak Benbaji and Daniel Statman argue that the morality of war can be governed by a freely accepted agreement over the principles that apply to it. This war contract supersedes the application of the principles of everyday morality to war, thus defying ‘revisionist’ approaches to war, and it upholds a recognizable version of traditional just war theory. This article argues for three claims. First, the contractarian apparatus Benbaji and Statman deploy is actually inconsistent with the deep reasoning they advance on its behalf, since, unsatisfactorily, the contract is supposed to retain normative force even when it is breached by aggressors. Second, the underlying character of their theory makes it something closer to a consequentialist account. Third, this new understanding of their account renders it less distinct from certain articulations of revisionism than they think.