Defensive Killing by Frowe Helen;

Author:Frowe, Helen;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Oxford University Press, Incorporated
Published: 2014-01-01T16:00:00+00:00

4.9 Prohibitions on Counter-Defence

4.9.1 Moral Responsibility

Some internalists have suggested that if Victim chooses to try to harm Murderer, we can deny Murderer a right of defence, even though he’s not liable to the harms that Victim will inflict. Kai Draper and Jeff McMahan have both suggested that this is because Murderer bears greater responsibility than Victim for the situation in which Murderer is harmed.43

This seems plausible when it’s applied to rights to compensation rather than rights of defence. The connection between liability and compensation is more tenuous: whilst there is perhaps a presumption in favour of compensation when a person suffers a harm to which they are not liable, this presumption can be defeated.44 But I’m not sure that it shows that Murderer lacks of a right of defence. For a start, it’s not obviously true that Murderer is more responsible than Victim for the current situation. Murderer did have an opportunity to ensure than neither he nor Victim need bear a cost, since he could have refrained from attacking Victim. But Victim also has such an opportunity, since he could have jumped to safety without harming Murderer. If he chooses not to, it is his choice. This is not a case in which someone other than Victim is solely—and therefore more—responsible for bringing it about that someone must suffer a harm. Murderer may be partly responsible—presumably Victim wouldn’t have tried to harm Murderer at all if Murderer hadn’t try to kill him. But this doesn’t show that Murderer is more responsible than Victim for the fact that, now, one of them must bear a cost.

Even if we grant that Murderer is more responsible than Victim for the unjust threat that Victim poses, I’m not sure that this is helpful to the internalist. Being morally responsible for an unjust threat usually rules out one’s having defensive rights because it is a ground of liability to harm. But taking this line here is effectively a denial of the internalist view, because it means that Murderer is liable to unnecessary force. Moreover, it looks incoherent. What would make Murderer liable to harm is his moral responsibility for an unjust threat. In this case, what grounds Murderer’s liability is his responsibility for the very unjust threat that internalists are saying he may not fend off—the threat posed by Victim. But if he’s liable to suffer the harm that Victim will inflict, in virtue of his moral responsibility for it, Victim’s responding threat is no longer an unjust threat. And if it’s not an unjust threat, how can Murderer’s moral responsibility for it be a ground of liability? Something has gone wrong here. I don’t see how invoking Murderer’s greater moral responsibility will help bring internalism in line with our intuition that Murderer may not fight back. The internalist will need to come up with some other explanation of why Murderer may not kill Victim in counter-defence.

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