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The article draws on Michael Walzer’s just war theory to assess the conduct of the Lebanon War of 1982 (Operation Peace for Galilee) and argues that according to the underpinning principles of Walzer’s theory, it was an unjust war. Sharon’s war plans, codenamed “Grand Oranim,” were designed to relieve the Lebanese Christian militias of their so-called Palestinian burden by driving the refugees into Jordan where they would presumably bring about a regime change and turn Jordan into a Palestinian state. My analysis focuses on the causes of this war, jus ad bellum, whether it was a war of self-defense, and the means that were employed in its conduct, its jus in bello. Likewise explored and analyzed here are the concepts of proportionality and the treatment of non-combatants.

This paper analyzes the importance of Michael Walzer’s self-help test and discusses its importance as a link between a community’s internal conflict and foreign military intervention. After a brief introduction to self-determination theory in Walzer’s philosophical thought –describing self-determination and non-intervention principles within the presumption of state legitimacy–, the paper examines the concept of self-help. Also, it addresses the particular features of this mechanism, examining the two levels of this test as well as the consequences of passing both. Then, the study discusses the importance of military intervention –either counter-intervention or intervention in contexts of secession – as a guarantor of self-determination in the international realm. Finally, the paper challenges the philosophical connection established by Walzer between military victory and national representativeness through the study of the Syrian Civil War. The article concludes that the self-help test is a controversial yet interesting proposal combining the respect for self-determination commitment with military intervention in the protection of international stability

In Michael Walzer on War and Justice Brian Orend offers the first clear and comprehensive look at Walzer's entire body of work. He deals with controversial subjects - from bullets, blood, and bombs to the distribution of money, political power, and health care - and surveys both the national and the international fields of justice. This is an important book that provides a thought-provoking and critical look at some of the most pressing and controversial topics of our time.

Michael Walzer's use of John Stuart Mill's A Few Words on Non-Intervention (1859) helped to inaugurate it as a canonical text of international theory. However, Walzer's use of the text was highly selective because he viewed the first half as a historically parochial discussion of British foreign policy, and his interest in the second was restricted to the passages in which Mill proposes principles of international morality to govern foreign military interventions to protect third parties. As a result, theorists tend to see those canonized passages as if through a glass darkly. Attention to the detail and context of Mill's first-half critique of Lord Palmerston's opposition to the Suez Canal project reveals that his discussion of purely protective intervention is embedded in a broader exploration of the limits of self-defence, including the moral permissibility of preventive military force and the use of protective interventions for defensive purposes. Moreover, reading the text holistically facilitates a refutation of some objections directed at it by Michael Doyle to the effect that Mill's conception of self-defence incorporates elements of aggression which makes it extremely dangerous when adapted for application to the contemporary world.

H.L.A. Hart's lost and found essay 'Discretion' has provided new insight into the issue of how legal systems can cope with indeterminacy in the law. The so-called 'open texture' of law calls for the exercise of judicial discretion, which, I argue, renders judges susceptible to the problem of dirty hands. To show this, I frame the problem as being open to an array of appropriate emotional responses, namely, various senses of guilt. With these responses in mind, I revise an example from Michael Walzer's original analysis in a way that highlights purely personal sacrifices in solutions to dirty hands situations. I then turn to an account of moral emotions in legal decision-making and show how judges—in failing to advance all interests—might be left with a unique sense of guilt. With an application of this account to Hart's legal positivism, it can be seen that a judge's hands are often dirtied in resolving borderline cases. If discretion leaves judges in situations where they must do wrong in order to do right, Hart's endorsement of a closure view of wrongdoing will lead to difficulties in how he can explain the presence of moral remainders in jurisprudence.

Michael Walzer is one of the most distinguished political philosophers and social critics of this century. His ideas have had great import and influence in political philosophy and political discussion, yet very few of his ideas have been incorporated explicitly into the business ethics literature. We argue that Walzer's work provides an important conceptual canvas for business ethics scholars that has not been adequately explored. Scholars in business ethics often borrow from political theory and philosophy to generate new insights and develop new substantive contributions. Many valuable theoretical resources are already used extensively—particularly Aristotle, Kant, Marx and a variety of utilitarian philosophers. Walzer offers another set of resources to bring to the conversation of what business ethics is and how business ethicists add value. This paper provides an opportunity to delve further into Walzer's writings, particularly themes that are tied to business ethics, and to illustrate how his ideas can be extended to reshape our understanding of the field and develop new perspectives on ethical issues in commerce.

In theory, the just war tradition claims to provide an appropriate standard for distinguishing legitimate military intervention from illegitimate aggression, which reduces the incidence of state and international violence. In practice, however, the concept of just war helps to morally embellish military action and obscure the political interests behind it. The article provides both a moral and political critique of just war theories, without in turn advocating a pacifist ostracism of war or denying the need for a normative justification of wars in terms of political realism. The argument is not that war cannot be justified in individual cases, but rather that the attempt to legitimise war as a general instrument of law and justice fails both in moral philosophy and political theory. As a last resort, war requires a theory of just peace as a supplement in order to present a coherent conception of the justification of war and of peace.

In the aftermath of September 11, 2001, policy makers and others have debated the question of whether or not the United States should torture in an effort to prevent terrorist attacks. In a series of controversial essays, the legal theorist Alan Dershowitz argues that, if a democratic society is going to torture, it should at least be done under the cover of law. To that end, he recommends establishing a legal mechanism by which a judge could issue torture warrants—much as they do now for search warrants. In this essay, I examine Dershowitz's proposal in light of Michael Walzer's classic essay on dirty hands. Just as Walzer uses political theater as a lens for viewing the issue of political assassination, I similarly draw upon a dramatic response to Dershowitz's proposal to think through the issue of torture warrants.

The book contains a series of critical appraisals by political theorists of Michael Walzer's book Spheres of Justice. The main ideas of Walzer's work are summarized in the introduction, and Walzer himself replies to criticisms in the concluding chapter. Four main issues are addressed. First, does the interpretative approach to justice favoured by Walzer, which focuses on the shared understandings of political communities, allow him to obtain sufficient critical distance from the beliefs and practices of his own society? Second, is it possible to preserve separate ‘spheres of justice’ in which different social goods are distributed by different criteria, or do some goods— especially money—have a significance that blurs the boundaries between spheres? Third, can equality be achieved simply by keeping the spheres of justice separate, or does it require a more radical form of redistribution? Fourth, what role does democratic citizenship play in Walzer's theory of justice?