Not My Work
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1467-856X.2006.00255.x/full#ss5
To what extent are political leaders entitled to violate embedded moral and legal rules in response to national emergencies? Do they have a duty to do so? This article assesses two prominent liberal approaches to this question.
The ‘dirty hands’ thesis insists that there is a radical separation between private and public ethics and that the latter may require the commission of acts prohibited by the former.
A ‘lesser evil’ approach holds that leaders may even violate the more permissive public ethics if there is a consequentialist case for doing so.
Both suggest to some extent that certain acts remain wrong but may be necessary nonetheless. While this position makes good philosophical sense, it makes little political sense. In practice, societies choose either to validate or reject the legitimacy of certain acts. This article aims to overcome this problem by suggesting a new way of thinking about the way that ‘dirty hands’ and ‘lesser evil’ ethics work in practice through Ian Clark's work on legitimacy. It argues that in particular cases actors evaluate between competing political, ethical and legal claims,
Moral absolutism is not often considered a valued commodity when it comes to war. Political leaders, it is commonly argued, are primarily responsible to their own citizens. Leaders have a duty to protect the physical security, material wealth and common life of their citizens and these obligations override all other obligations to law and morality (Kennan 1985; Hendrickson 1997).
This obligation gives rise to the doctrine of national partiality. That is, because they are morally and legally obliged to place the interests and welfare of their citizens above those of others, political leaders must value their own citizens' lives more highly than those of other states' citizens (McMahan and McKim 1993). National partiality is neither new nor a creature of realism
To what extent are political leaders entitled to violate embedded moral and legal rules in response to national emergencies? Do they have a duty to do so? This article assesses two prominent liberal approaches to this question.
The ‘dirty hands’ thesis insists that there is a radical separation between private and public ethics and that the latter may require the commission of acts prohibited by the former.
A ‘lesser evil’ approach holds that leaders may even violate the more permissive public ethics if there is a consequentialist case for doing so.
Both suggest to some extent that certain acts remain wrong but may be necessary nonetheless. While this position makes good philosophical sense, it makes little political sense. In practice, societies choose either to validate or reject the legitimacy of certain acts. This article aims to overcome this problem by suggesting a new way of thinking about the way that ‘dirty hands’ and ‘lesser evil’ ethics work in practice through Ian Clark's work on legitimacy. It argues that in particular cases actors evaluate between competing political, ethical and legal claims,
Moral absolutism is not often considered a valued commodity when it comes to war. Political leaders, it is commonly argued, are primarily responsible to their own citizens. Leaders have a duty to protect the physical security, material wealth and common life of their citizens and these obligations override all other obligations to law and morality (Kennan 1985; Hendrickson 1997).
This obligation gives rise to the doctrine of national partiality. That is, because they are morally and legally obliged to place the interests and welfare of their citizens above those of others, political leaders must value their own citizens' lives more highly than those of other states' citizens (McMahan and McKim 1993). National partiality is neither new nor a creature of realism