Gabriella Blum

The Laws of War and the 'Lesser Evil'

One of the fundamental principles of international humanitarian law (IHL) is that it recognizes no lesser-evil justification for breaking its rules. Those violating the laws of war will thus be viewed as war criminals even when their conduct was intended to - and in fact did - prevent much greater harm. This Article argues that this deep-rooted absolutist stance undermines the humanitarian drive of the laws of war, and offers, instead, a lesser-evil defense. The argument begins with the obvious analogy to the necessity defense in domestic criminal law, emphasizing the adaptations that are necessary in order to transpose the domestic concept onto the international plane. It then proceeds to test possible first-order accounts – deontological, consequentialist, and institutional – for why IHL might nonetheless prefer a more absolutist stance than domestic law. It finds that none of these accounts offers a compelling explanation for the exclusion of any lesser-evil justification from IHL. The Article then proceeds to develop a blueprint for the concept of a humanitarian necessity justification that would exculpate an actor who violated the laws of war in the name of a greater humanitarian good under certain conditions. A central component of the justification, which is required given the special nature of IHL, is a condition that the greater humanitarian good would benefit the enemy, rather than the actor’s own people.

The Crime and Punishment of States

Recent years have seen much speculation over executive branch legal interpretation and internal decisionmaking, particularly in matters of national security and international law. Debate persists over how and why the executive arrives at particular understandings of its legal constraints, the extent to which the positions taken by one presidential administration may bind the next, and, indeed, the extent to which the President is constrained by law at all. Current scholarship focuses on rational, political, and structural arguments to explain executive actions and legal positioning, but it has yet to take account of the diverse ways in which legal questions arise for the executive branch, which have a significant effect on executive decisionmaking.This Article adds necessary texture to these debates by identifying and exploring the role of distinct triggers for legal interpretation - which this Article terms “interpretation catalysts” - in driving and shaping executive branch decisionmaking, particularly at the intersection of national security and international law. Interpretation catalysts impel the executive to consider, crystallize and potentially assert a legal interpretation of its obligations under domestic or international law on a particular matter, and they can both impede and facilitate change within the executive. Examples of interpretation catalysts include such diverse triggering events as decisions whether to use force against an armed group; lawsuits filed against the U.S. government; obligatory reports to human rights treaty bodies; and even the act of speechmaking. Each of these unique catalysts triggers a distinct process for legal decisionmaking within the executive, and is instrumental in framing the task at hand, shaping the process engaged to arrive at the substantive decision, establishing the relative influence of the actors who will decide the matter, and informing the contextual pressures and interests that may bear on the decision, and thus shapes the ultimate substantive position itself. These distinct mechanisms for decisionmaking each carry their own individual pressures and biases; thus in laying bare the interpretation catalysts phenomenon, this Article demonstrates potential avenues for actors inside and external to the executive branch to predict, to explain, and even to affect executive decisionmaking. This Article will explore the effect of interpretation catalysts on executive legal interpretation, and address some of the implications of this phenomenon for scholars, private actors, courts, and executive branch officials.

Unsatisfying Wars: Degrees of Risk and the Jus ex Bello

We suggest thinking about the beginning and ending of wars as an exercise in risk management. We argue that states, like individual citizens, must accept that some degree of security risk is inevitable when coexisting with others. We offer two principles for the just management of military risk. The first principle is Morally Justified Bearable Risk, which demands that parties at war temper their claims of justice with the realities of an anarchic and conflicted international system. The second principle, Minimum Consistency toward Risk, mandates that states generally not weigh security threats higher than risks from other sources.

War for the Wrong Reasons: Lessons from Law

In Ethics for Enemies, Frances Kamm argues that, under certain conditions, it is morally permissible for a state to launch a war for opportunistic reasons. We consider how law might shed light on Kamm’s argument. Part I addresses the application of criminal and tort law to individual acts of violence analogous to the acts of war analyzed by Kamm. It primarily argues that these bodies of law rely on a framework for determining legal permissibility that runs counter to, and perhaps demonstrates weaknesses in, Kamm’s framework for assessing moral permissibility. Part II considers the law of war. It maintains that, although modern law permits certain opportunistic acts of war, the law does so on terms that cut against Kamm’s claim as to their moral permissibility.