Just war theorising has undergone a renaissance inspired by the ground-breaking work of Jeff McMahan. Central to the new orthodoxy is the claim that self-defence is a right that can justify a right to inflict harm on unlawful aggressors. Crucially, this is a right to inflict harm available to both the victim and others even if these others are not harmed or threatened. This talk explores how this view of just war as self-defence justifying a right to harm is based on a misunderstanding of how self-defence works in criminal law. This alternative view understands self-defence as a kind of defence, such as duress, which might provide an excuse for wrongs and not a justification to do wrong. The talk examines the consequences for just war theorising, such as whether understanding just war as excused sets a higher threshold for justification.
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