Knowing When Not to Fight
Journal: Oxford University Press eBooks
Year: 2016

Abstract Should military personnel (‘soldiers’) become selective conscientious objectors to an unjust war? This chapter argues, first, that in most cases the fog of war and politics makes it unreasonable to expect soldiers to make fact-intensive judgments about whether the war is just. Second, it argues that even a just-war tribunal, of the sort proposed by Jeff McMahan, will not do the job. It will inevitably lack the legitimacy and fact-finding capacity necessary to reassure soldiers in such a