Tag: 04 Panel Discussion

Stockdale Center research fellows, Dr. Ed Barrett, Dr. David Luban and Dr. Jessica Wolfendale discuss their takeaways from a year of careful reading and analysis of classic texts in the Just War tradition. Dr. Luban discusses how the large wars of the twentieth century affected thought on the first use of force or ‘preemptive’ or ‘anticipatory’ force. Falling under the ‘just cause’ condition of traditional theory, he argues that the significant restrictions placed upon such moves has, by and large, been a positive development. The discussion revolves around the related notion of immediacy and immanence of threat. Dr. Wolfendale examines the criterion of “right intention” and argues that the work it does toward jus ad bellum sifting is redundant, mirroring proportionality criteria. It is also unclear how to apply the criterion to complex entities such as states and armies. Dr. Barrett discusses the doctrine of double effect and its relationship to virtue ethics and the causal, epistemic and other relationships between acts of violence that bring about the death of innocents as an unintended but foreseen consequenc