This work offers an analysis of all the legal and moral issues surrounding humanitarian intervention: the deaths of innocent persons and the Doctrine of Double Effect Governmental legitimacy - The Doctrine of Effective Political Control; UN Charter and evaluation of the Nicaragua ruling; The Morality of not intervening; US-led invasion of Iraq; Humanitarian intervention authorised by the UN Security Council - Iraq, Somalia, Haiti, Rwanda, and Bosnia among others highlight NATO's intervention in Kosovo; The Nicaragua Decision; and The precedents of (...) Panama, Liberia and Sierra Leone. The book's features include: a new framework based on the doctrine of double effect; basic principles of international ethics; outline of the moral argument for humanitarian intervention; explores the morality and legality of military action to end tyranny or anarchy; arguments in a much more detailed and complete fashion than in previous editions; in-depth examination of philosophy of international law; the relationship between custom and moral theory; new discussion of the question of right authority; and a full analysis of recent interventions in Kosovo and Iraq. book addresses a broad interdisciplinary audience of international lawyers, philosophers, and political scientists. In this new edition, the author responds to critics while updating the discussion in the light of the momentous events that took place at the beginning of the new millennium. (shrink)

What does the world's engagement with the unfolding crisis in Darfur tell us about the impact of the Iraq war on the norm of humanitarian intervention? Is a global consensus about a “responsibility to protect” more or less likely? There are at least three potential answers to these questions. Some argue that the merging of strategic interests and humanitarian goods amplified by the intervention in Afghanistan makes it more likely that the world's most powerful states will act to prevent or (...) halt humanitarian crises. Others insist that the widespread perception that the United States and its allies “abused” humanitarian justifications to legitimate its invasion of Iraq has set back efforts to build a global consensus about humanitarian action. A third group argues that the “responsibility to protect” inhibits the potential for abuse and, as a result, consensus is likely to strengthen post-Iraq for precisely this reason. Through a detailed study of the international engagement with Darfur, I suggest that the latter two arguments have merit but need to be adjusted. I argue that the humanitarian intervention norm has changed in two subtle ways. First, while the strength of the norm itself has not changed, the credibility of the United States and U.K. as “norm carriers” has been significantly undermined. Second, while the “responsibility to protect” has been invoked to support international activism, it has also re-legitimated anti-interventionist arguments. (shrink)

Institutionalizing the Just War provides a new approach to theorizing the morality of war and argues that sound moral principles regarding war-making must take into account the fact that the validity of moral principles can depend upon existing institutions and social practices.

Informed consent is valid only if the person giving it is competent. Although allegedly informed consents are routinely tendered, there are nonetheless serious problems with the concept of competence as it stands. First, conceptual work upon competence is incomplete: the concept is unanalyzed and no logic of competence has been identified. It is thus virtually impossible to reliably discern who is competent. ;Traditional work on competence has explicated three dichotomies from which the necessary conditions for the possibility of competence will (...) be identified, viz., that competence is either a global or a specific notion; is present in varying degrees or in virtue of a threshold; and may or not include appeals to consequences. Past efforts have failed to notice a fourth dichotomy: competence as an affective or cognitive notion. Failure to designate the appropriate arms of these dichotomies is responsible for there being, at present, no reliable test for competence. The inadequacies of a highly regarded particular test for competence, the mental status examination, are examined in light of this failure. ;Competence is located within the rule-governed practice of informed consent. That practice and hence, competence, is justified through a Kantian analysis of respect for persons. This analysis reveals that the logic of competence requires assessment in terms of specific rather than global concerns; degrees of ability rather than a threshold; both cognitive and affective abilities; and no appeal to consequences. ;Based upon the analyses of consent as an example of decision making within the practice of informed consent and of respect for persons, the capacities which jointly comprise competence are identified. These are the capacities to receive, recognize, and retrieve information; to reason about, relate to oneself, and rank options; to choose among alternatives; and, under certain circumstances, to defend one's choice. ;Identification of the logic of competence and explication of and justification for the capacities that comprise competence to consent provide a conceptual foundation for the crucial concept of competence that the informed consent process currently lacks. It should facilitate construction of a test for competence. (shrink)