ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the contemporary controversy surrounding self-defence by initially charting its theoretical genesis and practical manifestation in positive law, with a particular focus on the impact of the 1945 UN Charter. The US-led response to the 2001 terrorist attacks challenged positive law and constituted an explicit attempt to radically alter the doctrine governing self-defence. Self-defence has been a consistent justification proffered by just war theorists. The just war tradition accepts that violence may be occasionally necessary but seeks to limit the resort to force by creating the means by which the legitimacy of any particular act of aggression can be judged and hence future action constrained. The proposed alteration of the status of self-defence amounts to a rejection of positive law in favour of a return to a framework of regulation based on subjective conceptions of what is right—that is, a form of natural law.
