Institutionalizing the Just War offers a new approach to thinking about the ethics of large-scale armed conflict. Allen Buchanan takes a unique approach to just war theory, arguing that theories that are content with articulating abstract moral norms specifying right acts of war-making, provide too little guidance for responding to the real world moral problems of war. Buchanan here instead takes an institutional approach, combining moral analysis with data on how institutions are designed, and providing concrete proposals for morally progressive innovations at the institutional level. Buchanan's institutional approach in this book - which is based on the revision of previously published essays -- is singular and will be of great interest not just to scholars of just war theory, but anyone interested in the morality of war within political science, political philosophy, philosophy of international law, and public policy.
Allen Buchanan is James B. Duke Professor of Philosophy and Professor of Law at Duke University and author of 13 books. His most recent books are The Heart of Human Rights (OUP, 2013) and The Evolution of Moral Progress: A Biocultural Theory, co-authored with Russell Powell (OUP, 2018).
Acknowledgements
Preface
Introduction
Chapter One: Institutionalizing the Just War
Chapter Two: A Richer Jus ad Bellum
Chapter Three: Institutional Legitimacy
Chapter Four: Reciprocal Institutional Legitimation
Chapter Five: The Internal Legitimacy of Humanitarian Intervention
Chapter Six: Reforming the International Law of Humanitarian Intervention
Chapter Seven: Justifying Preventive War, Institutionally
Chapter Eight: A Precommitment Regime for Humanitarian Intervention