Weighing Lives in War

• Introduction


• Part I: Necessity and The Lives of Combatants


• 1: Gabriella Blum: The Dispensable Lives of Soldiers


• 2: Jens David Ohlin: Sharp Wars are Brief


• 3: Larry May: Humanity, Necessity, and the Rights of Soldiers


• 4: Michael L. Gross: The Deaths of Combatants


• Part II: Proportionality, Civilian Harm, and Soldiers


• 5: Jeff McMahan: Proportionate Defense


• 6: Jovana Davidovic: Justification and Proportionality in War


• 7: Saba Bazargan-Forward: Compensation and Proportionality in War


• 8: Adil Haque: A Theory of Jus in Bello Proportionality


• 9: Ariel Colonomos: 4 Proportionality in Warfare as a Political Norm


• Part III: Combatancy and The Value of Lives in Asymmetric Conflict


• 10: Claire Finkelstein: The Equality of Lives in War and the Principle of Distinction


• 11: Jon Todd: Guiding Executive Decisions on Combatancy in War


• 12: Andrew Forcehimes: Weighing Unjust Lives


• 13: Michael Schmitt, Jeffrey Biller, Sean C. Fahey, David S. Goddard, and Chad Highfill: 4 Joint and Combined Targeting: Structure and Process

Jens David Ohlin is Professor of Law and Associate Dean for Academic Affairs at Cornell Law School. He specializes in international law and criminal law. He specifically focuses on the laws of war with special emphasis on the effects of new technology on the waging of warfare, including unmanned drones in the strategy of targeted killings, cyber-warfare, and the role of non-state actors in armed conflicts. He authored The Assault on International Law (Oxford, 2015).

Larry May is the W. Alton Jones Professor of Philosophy, Professor of Law, and Professor of Political Science at Vanderbilt University. He has published over thirty books, including book length studies of each of the four crimes under the ICC's jurisdiction. These books have won awards in philosophy, law, and international relations. He has also published extensively on the history of the just war tradition, especially on the work of Grotius and Hobbes. He co-authored Proportionality in International Law (with Michael Newton, Oxford, 2014), and Limiting Leviathan: Hobbes on Law and International Affairs (Oxford, 2013).

Claire Finkelstein is the Algernon Biddle Professor of Law and Professor of Philosophy at the University of Pennsylvania, and a co-Director of the University of Pennsylvania Institute of Law and Philosophy. She writes in the areas of criminal law theory, moral and political philosophy, philosophy of law, international law, and rational choice theory. A particular focus of her work is bringing philosophical rational choice theory to bear on legal theory, and she is particularly interested in tracing the implications of Hobbes' political theory for substantive legal questions. Recently she has also been writing on the moral and legal aspects of government-sponsored torture as part of the U.S. national security program. In 2008 Finkelstein was a Siemens Fellow at the American Academy in Berlin, during which time she presented papers in Berlin, Leipzig, and Heidelberg.