ABSTRACT
Many revisionists use minimal accounts of liability in their theorizing. These standards grant just combatants permissive rules for attacking their enemies by deeming even ignorant, well-intentioned, ineffectual combatants on the unjust side liable to defensive violence. The more intuitive and familiar culpability standard of liability would seem to prevent innocent defenders on the just side from violently defending themselves against non-culpable attackers. This chapter shows how a culpability standard can permit innocent parties’ defense against non-culpable attackers. While this book does not endorse an individualist approach to just war theory (focusing on issues of individual liability), the defense of a culpability standard is important to finish the critique of minimal standards of liability and to introduce a distinction for use in ascribing individual responsibility for collective action.
