ABSTRACT
This chapter categorizes revisionists according to the theory of liability they use to deem most combatants on the unjust side of a war liable to defensive violence. Revisionists’ rejection of the moral equality of combatants depends on (1) an individualist action theory that considers all actions pursuant to an unjust end to be unjustified and (2) a standard of liability so minimal that even non-culpable combatants on the unjust side are liable to the just side’s violence for these unjustified actions. Revisionists look to the unjust threat posed to a defender, the objective injustice of the action, the strict liability of the agent for an unjust action, or a hybrid of the latter two elements to serve as standards of liability. All these standards of liability fail, leaving the revisionists’ fundamental thesis of the inequality of combatants ungrounded. The second account has implausible implications and the first and third reduce to accounts of mere causal (rather than moral) responsibility. The hybrid model is partially vulnerable to the latter two critiques. Two accounts of moral luck, which if coherent, would redeem the strict liability account as an account of moral as opposed to causal responsibility, are rejected.
