essay in self defense

What Makes Self-Defense Justifiable?

In my last column , I took up the question of whether abolishing the insanity defense violates the Constitution. Regardless of how one answers that question, the defense remains controversial. Many suspect that insanity and other excuses based on mental or emotional disorders allow bad people to get away with misconduct. Such suspicions fueled the 1990s book by Alan Dershowitz, The Abuse Excuse .

In this column, I want to talk about a different defense, one that carries almost no controversy. That is self-defense/defense of others (the right to use force to defend oneself or another person). Unlike insanity, which provides an excuse, self-defense is a justification. What’s the difference?

An excuse holds that a person committed a wrongful act but should nonetheless avoid responsibility—insanity, entrapment, and duress are excuses. A justification means that even though a person carried out an ordinarily prohibited act, he was right to do it and therefore deserves no legal condemnation in the form of conviction or punishment. Violence in self-defense and defense of others are examples of justified acts.

Another way of thinking about the two categories is to observe that the first emphasizes the circumstances or personal impairments that explain a mistake, while the second says that the defendant did not make a mistake. If we had it to do over again, we would try to avoid the excused conduct while affirmatively pursuing the justified.

Self-Defense: A Classic Scene

Almost no one would deny a person the right to use violence to protect himself against a would-be killer. The same holds true for lesser threats, but I focus on death because the defendant’s actions are most extreme. If someone enters your home without permission and points a gun at you, you may shoot or otherwise kill the intruder in self-defense. A police officer may do the same when confronting an armed assailant threatening the officer’s life— the latter may, consistent with the Constitution, use deadly force .

With all agreeing that self-defense is permissible, if we asked a random sample of lay people “what is your primary emotion when you need to use violence in self-defense or defense of others?,” I suspect that most would identify the correct answer as “fear.”

We all know about the fear response. If we believe that something or someone threatens our safety or our lives, we feel afraid. Sometimes we feel afraid even when nothing especially harmful is in the offing. We might call this emotion anxiety, which is a close relative of fear that seems less likely to yield beneficial consequences. If, by contrast, acrid smoke is billowing up the stairwell as we descend, choking us and making it difficult to escape, we might feel terror. The same is likely if a wild cat, such as a tiger, has cornered us and is baring his teeth and growling.

By contrast to these variations on fear, anger might seem a surprising emotion for these types of scary situations. We might predictably experience anger when someone has taken away something that either belonged to us or that we wanted for ourselves. If you were feeling very hungry and made yourself a delicious sandwich, you might become angry if a co-worker clumsily knocked your sandwich onto the floor and stepped on it. Or if you described a creative idea at a meeting, and someone else repeated the idea in her own words and received all of the credit for it. Maybe someone cut you off in traffic and made you miss the green light. Or perhaps you had a crush on a particular guy or girl and then watched a rival swoop in and steal his or her heart. Jealousy could be part of the feeling when not-yet-acquired commodities or relationships are involved, but so could anger. And notably, none of these situations would justify violence in “self-defense” or “defense of others.” Revenge is an all-too-familiar phenomenon, but it is not legally permissible.

In a scene from the film, Anatomy of a Murder , which many professional responsibility instructors show their students, a criminal defense attorney talks to his client, who is on trial for murder. The lawyer and the defendant speak about potential defenses that the latter could use, in light of the fact that he killed a man after the man had raped the defendant’s wife. The client proposes self-defense (which includes defense of others).

Even though everyone could understand a husband’s desire to kill his wife’s rapist, however, revenge is no defense to murder, and the attorney explains as much to his client. The scene is iconic because the lawyer repeatedly but subtly steers the client towards an insanity defense, notwithstanding the fact that the client is plainly sane and, equally plainly, killed his victim as revenge for the rape.

Beyond ethical questions about the attorney/client conversation, the scene is instructive in another way too. It teaches us that committing violence out of righteous anger—the sort of anger that can motivate a jury to acquit—is legally impermissible and unjustified, however sympathetic and understandable. In some sense, then, self-defense and punishment after the fact are the antithesis of each other.

So long as you are scared that something will happen—and you act to prevent it from happening—you might have legal recourse to violence in self-defense. But once the thing you feared has already happened, and you are no longer scared but angry, jealous, or enraged instead, you no longer have the authority to react in violence. If one were looking for a simple rule, then, one might come up with “you may kill (or attack) when you’re scared but not when you’re angry.”

The Consequence of This Simple Rule

We know that the emotion you feel is not really the criterion for self-defense. We want to know whether the circumstances are such that you reasonably believed violence was necessary to protect yourself from harm or whether you instead were acting after any danger had passed and you were reacting to the damage inflicted. Similar to what the Supreme Court has said in the context of police stops motivated by race but justified by probable cause, our focus is on whether such an act was justified under the circumstances, not on what the motives or feelings of the actors were.

Yet the simple rule stays with us, notwithstanding these caveats, just as so many regard as unreasonable a police stop motivated by race, even if the driver really was speeding. To understand why the simple rule can be harmful, consider the case of the battered woman who, after years of physical brutality, takes a sharp carving knife out of the kitchen cabinet in the middle of the night, approaches her sleeping batterer, and stabs him in the throat repeatedly until he chokes to death on his own blood. Has she acted in self-defense?

When I was in law school, I did some battered women’s advocacy. In a film we watched in preparation for the work, we learned that the most severely punished offenders of all are women who kill their batterers after years of abuse. We talked about how the women might have found the police uninterested in protecting them from a batterer’s violence, even as advocates knew (and might have told the women) that leaving a batterer tends to precipitate the most extreme violence and increases the odds of her losing her life.

In other words, battered women at least arguably had no choice but to kill batterers who refused to stop beating their partners. One might analogize this to a kidnapping situation in which the kidnapper is violent and too strong to defeat by day and would become lethally violent if the victim tried to escape. It could be necessary in such a case to kill the kidnapper as he slept.

Allies of women who killed their batterers have argued about the situation described above, regarding it either as one in which lethal self-defense is justified or as one in which the excuse of “battered women’s syndrome”—in which women feel helpless notwithstanding their actual capacity to leave—is available as a variant on diminished capacity. But at the time and thereafter, I found very puzzling the notion that women in these situations were receiving the harshest sentences for homicide. Even if juries and judges did not quite view the killing as self-defense, why would people be so punitive toward battery victims? It didn’t make any sense to me.

People have their theories, of course. Some said that this was a product of misogyny. People think men have the right to discipline their wives with violence, and women stopping them from doing so inspires retributive sentiments. Others proposed that a woman who acts out in aggression—and not in defense of her children—has violated stereotypical sex roles and therefore faces an especially draconian consequence. Still others said that there is something disturbing about the act of killing a man while he sleeps. It isn’t a fair fight, by some lights. And finally, some might simply reject the notion that the battered woman cannot safely escape from her partner—and without the defense, they’re left with an extremely violent murder that was also unnecessary, because the victim/perpetrator could have left instead.

Any or even all of these accounts may have some truth to them; it is difficult to know. I have another theory, though, connected with the simple rule identified above: you may kill when you’re scared but not when you’re angry. I believe that in at least some of these cases, the jury and judge rejected self-defense because they saw anger in the battered woman’s actions. A woman who repeatedly stabs her sleeping husband in the throat or who beats her husband to death with a hammer is plainly exhibiting anger; indeed, she is most likely experiencing rage.

So what? Why would a jury care whether she is experiencing fear or anger or both? And what are the implications of that concern? The reason a jury cares is that once again, the characteristic emotion that people associate with self-defense is fear. You reasonably believe that I am going to kill you, you feel scared of that prospect, and you kill me instead to protect yourself against me. Anger is the emotion of revenge; we feel empowered by our sense of grievance when we are angry. We aren’t afraid. And we aren’t in such cases authorized by the law to attack or kill anyone.

The reality is that people can experience more than one emotion at a time. You can feel both frightened at the possibility of being killed and enraged that someone would dare threaten your life. And a woman who kills her batterer may very well experience both fear that he will hurt her again or finally kill her and rage at his repeated assaults upon her body over time.

The ways in which battered women who kill their batterers typically carry out the killing testifies to extreme anger, even as it at least sometimes manifests fear of continuing or escalating violence. The two emotions are consistent. In fact, people hate feeling afraid so much that the fact that they are feeling that way can itself make them angry.

The idealized terrified victim is in reality only one kind of victim. Others feel rage and hatred instead of fear. And still others feel a combination of emotions. Consider the fact that when someone puts us in danger, we have a “fight/flight/or freeze” response. To fight almost requires the kind of energy associated with anger. And if one is only fleeing, then there may never be any need to invoke the doctrine of self-defense.

Protection and Anger

To illustrate the mix of emotions people experience in the face of a lethal threat, consider the case of a self-destructive member of the family. Let us call this family member John and posit that he is nineteen years old. Assume that he lives with his mom, Jane, and that he has been using increasingly dangerous amounts of heroin and skipping classes at the local community college for the past eight months and that he misses meals regularly and has begun to look skeletal. One evening, Jane enters the living room and notices that John, sitting on the couch, has a needle in his arm and appears to be injecting a lethal amount of heroin. Jane cannot believe what she is seeing.

She races over to her son and smacks the syringe off his arm. She immediately begins screaming.

“You do this in MY HOUSE???!!! You bring that poison under MY ROOF and sit in MY LIVING ROOM on MY COUCH, all paid for with MY MONEY??!! Get the hell out of here, you worthless, lazy piece of s—!! I wish your good-for-nothing father had used a condom!!”

Such talk by a boy’s mother is less than ideal, but we can understand Jane’s anger and outrage at her son’s willingness to carry on as he has, potentially killing himself in the middle of her living room. Yet we can also understand that she smacked at the syringe in her son’s arm to save his life, that she saw he was injecting life-threatening amounts of heroin, and that she did what was necessary to stop him. She was feeling both protective and enraged toward the same target, and there is nothing contradictory in this mix.

Yet if she caused John to bruise, neighbors might feel convinced that she was engaged in an unjustifiable battery rather than a necessary intervention. And they would be wrong.

Emotion a Clue but Not Dispositive

Knowing what emotions an accused felt at the time of an alleged offense is obviously helpful. If you knew that an accused murderer felt pleasure and happy excitement at the time that he killed his victim, you would have good evidence that the killing was not justified. But some of the emotions that we associate with particular kinds of actions could be misleading us (and juries). We might be applying the simple rule in error.

Someone who feels angry when she inflicts physical injury or even death on another person has not provided evidence that she was unjustified in what she did. Instead, although anger is generally a socially unwelcome emotion, it is also an extremely common feeling that people are likely to have when they encounter situations and individuals that threaten their own lives or wellbeing or the lives or wellbeing of the people they care about. The powerlessness that can provide the predicate for self-defense or defense of others will often induce allegedly incriminating feelings of rage. No one, however, should be convicted of a crime because he was angry at the time that he defended himself or another.

Posted in: Criminal Law

Tags: anger , defense of others , emotions , fear , self-defense

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by Sherry F. Colb

Essay on Self Defence

Students are often asked to write an essay on Self Defence in their schools and colleges. And if you’re also looking for the same, we have created 100-word, 250-word, and 500-word essays on the topic.

Let’s take a look…

100 Words Essay on Self Defence

Understanding self defence.

Self-defence is the act of protecting oneself from harm. It involves using physical force or other means to prevent or stop an attack. It’s an essential skill for everyone, especially in situations of danger.

Importance of Self Defence

Learning self-defence is crucial for personal safety. It boosts confidence, improves physical fitness, and teaches discipline. It’s not about fighting, but about avoiding harm and staying safe.

Learning Self Defence

Self-defence can be learned through martial arts classes, online courses, or self-study. It’s important to practice regularly to master the techniques.

Responsible Use of Self Defence

Self-defence should only be used when necessary, to prevent harm. It’s not an excuse for aggression or violence. Always remember, the goal is to protect, not to harm.

250 Words Essay on Self Defence

Introduction.

Self-defence is the inherent right of every individual to protect oneself from physical harm. It is a fundamental principle rooted in the instinct for survival, and it has been legally recognized in most jurisdictions worldwide.

Legal Perspective

From a legal standpoint, self-defence is typically justified when the individual reasonably believes that they are in imminent danger. The response must be proportional to the threat faced, ensuring that the action taken is not excessive or unreasonable.

Psychological Aspects

Psychologically, self-defence involves the development of a mindset that prepares one to face any threat. This mindset is not about promoting violence but rather fostering a sense of personal security and assertiveness. It encourages individuals to become more aware of their surroundings, promoting a heightened sense of situational awareness.

Physical Aspects

Physically, self-defence involves learning specific techniques to fend off attackers. Various martial arts disciplines like Karate, Judo, and Krav Maga offer structured self-defence training. These techniques can empower individuals, enhancing their confidence and physical capabilities.

Importance of Self-Defence

The importance of self-defence lies in its potential to save lives and prevent harm. It promotes personal safety and empowers individuals, particularly those who might be perceived as vulnerable. In a broader social context, self-defence can contribute to the overall safety and security of communities.

In conclusion, self-defence is a multifaceted concept with legal, psychological, and physical dimensions. It is an essential skill that everyone should consider learning, not only for personal safety but also for the well-being of the community at large.

500 Words Essay on Self Defence

Self-defence is an indispensable skill, often overlooked in our daily lives. It is the art of protecting oneself from harm through the use of physical force. The ability to defend oneself not only fosters a sense of security and confidence but also promotes a deeper understanding of the body and mind.

The Importance of Self-Defence

The world can be a dangerous place and unexpected situations can arise at any time. This unpredictability underscores the importance of self-defence. It equips individuals with the skills to protect themselves and others from potential harm. Furthermore, self-defence training can also enhance physical fitness and mental agility, contributing to overall well-being.

Physical and Psychological Benefits

Self-defence training, such as martial arts, boxing, or Krav Maga, improves physical strength, flexibility, and coordination. It also promotes cardiovascular health and boosts the immune system. Psychologically, it fosters resilience, discipline, and focus. It teaches individuals to remain calm under pressure, to think clearly in stressful situations, and to make quick, effective decisions. These skills are not only useful in dangerous situations but also beneficial in everyday life.

Empowerment and Confidence

Self-defence is empowering. It provides individuals with the confidence to navigate the world without fear, knowing they have the ability to protect themselves. This confidence can permeate all areas of life, improving relationships, work performance, and mental health. For vulnerable populations, such as women and the elderly, self-defence training can be particularly beneficial, providing them with the tools to defend themselves and assert their rights.

Legal and Ethical Considerations

While self-defence is an essential right, it is important to understand its legal and ethical boundaries. Most jurisdictions allow for reasonable force in self-defence, but what constitutes ‘reasonable’ can vary. Excessive force can lead to legal consequences. Ethically, self-defence should be a last resort, used only when all other options have been exhausted. Training in self-defence should also include education about these legal and ethical considerations.

In conclusion, self-defence is a vital skill that provides numerous benefits. It enhances physical health, mental resilience, and confidence, and empowers individuals to protect themselves and others. However, it is crucial to remember the legal and ethical boundaries of self-defence, and to use these skills responsibly. In a world of unpredictability, the ability to defend oneself is not just an advantage, it is a necessity.

That’s it! I hope the essay helped you.

If you’re looking for more, here are essays on other interesting topics:

• Essay on Self Control
• Essay on Secret of Happiness
• Essay on Scuba Diving

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Self-Defense

Killing and harming others are paradigmatic wrongs. And yet there is at least one intuitive exception to this prohibition—namely, killing or harming in self-defense, or in defense of others. Consider:

Murder : Attacker is culpably trying to kill Victim because he is jealous of Victim’s success. Victim can save his own life only by lethally throwing a grenade at Attacker.

With the exception of strict pacifists, there is broad consensus in morality and law that defensive harm can be permissible in cases like this. However, as we shall see, it is surprisingly difficult to explain the grounds and limits of this permission.

1.1 Liability vs. Lesser-Evil Justifications

1.2.1 the culpability account, 1.2.2 the causal account, 1.2.3 the responsibility account, 1.3.1 the scope of liability, 1.3.2 causal location, 1.3.3 causal contributions, 1.3.4 liability without causation, 2. agent-relative justifications, 3.1 narrow and wide proportionality, 3.2 proportionality and culpability, 3.3 proportionality and modes of agency, 3.4.1 opportunity costs, 3.4.2 harms and wrongs, 4.1 liability and necessity, 4.2 the scope of necessity, 4.3 distributing harms amongst the liable, 4.4 responsibility for defensive options, 4.5 provocateurs, 5. defense against justified threateners, 6.1 self-defense vs. other-defense, 6.2 other-defense as a duty to rescue, 6.3 other-defense and consent, 7. uncertainty, works cited, other works, other internet resources, related entries, 1. liability justifications.

On a standard view, the moral wrongness of killing and injuring is grounded in persons’ having stringent moral rights against such treatment. If defensive harming is at least sometimes morally permissible, it needs to be explained how the use of force can be consistent with these rights. Two broad types of justification are common in the literature.

The first holds that a person’s right against harm, though weighty, is not absolute and may be permissibly infringed if necessary to achieve a sufficiently important good. This is known as a lesser-evil justification. To illustrate, consider Trolley :

Trolley : A runaway trolley is lethally heading towards five innocent people. A bystander, Engineer, can divert the trolley away from the five down a side-track. The diverted trolley will kill Workman. (Thomson 1985. Based on a case in Foot 1967)

Although they are sensitive to outcomes, lesser-evil justifications are not straightforward consequentialist permissions. Crucially, the harmed party retains their right not to be killed, and this exerts significant normative force. It explains why the justification obtains only when there is a substantial disparity between the harm caused and good achieved, and not simply when harming is overall net beneficial. The persistence of the right also accounts for the widespread intuition that those who are harmed on lesser-evil grounds are owed compensation. More controversially, some argue that those subjected to lesser-evil harms are permitted to forcibly resist in defense of their rights (we return to this question in §5 )

By contrast, in cases like Murder a second type of justification obtains. The permission to kill Attacker cannot be explained by his right’s being overridden by the greater good, since killing him does not save more lives. Moreover, Attacker has no standing to complain about being harmed, nor a claim to compensation ex post (and he certainly does not have a permission to fight back.) Instead, the permission to kill Attacker is explained by his lack of a right not to be killed in the circumstances. This is known as a liability justification for harming.

There is disagreement about precisely what it means to be liable to a harm. Some theorists understand liability as involving the forfeiture of one’s usual rights. Others argue that our rights are already specified in such a way as to accommodate liability: Attacker does not forfeit his right when he attacks Victim; rather, he never had a right not to be killed under those circumstances (Draper 2016: 92). We might also think that liability is not limited to cases of forfeited rights, but rather identifies costs that we lack rights against bearing quite generally. A person’s being liable to pay her taxes, for example, does not seem to depend on her having forfeited her usual right to keep all of her income (Tadros 2016a: 110–118). On this broader view, one is liable to a harm insofar as one has a duty to bear it, irrespective of how that duty arose (for additional discussions of the nature of liability, see Dempsey 2016; Renzo 2017; Lang 2014, 2017; Ferzan 2016).

1.2 Grounds of Liability

One of the key questions in the literature on defensive harm concerns the conditions under which a person is liable. It is helpful to distinguish two areas of debate. The first focuses on the relevance (if any) of facts about individuals’ agency, such as their beliefs, evidence, intentions, culpability, and degree of moral responsibility. The second focuses on the relevance (if any) of causal relations between an individual and a threat of harm. In this sub-section, we will canvass some of the main positions on the agential conditions of liability. For ease of exposition, we will focus on causally straightforward cases, in which an individual poses a direct threat to others. We will consider the causation debate in §1.3 .

The culpability account holds that a person is liable for posing an unjust threat only if they are blameworthy (or are otherwise open to moral criticism) for doing so (Ferzan 2005, 2012). This account gets the intuitively correct result in Murder : Attacker is liable to defensive harm since he acts on the basis of a culpable intention to kill Victim. However, other cases yield more controversial results:

Conscientious Driver : Driver, who always drives carefully and keeps her car well-maintained, faultlessly loses control of her car. She will hit and kill Victim unless Victim blows up the car, and Driver, with a grenade (McMahan 2005a: 393–394). (Driver is usually described as a (minimally) morally responsible threatener .)

Ray Gun : Falling Person is helplessly blown by the wind down a well, at the bottom of which Victim is trapped. Falling Person will crush Victim to death unless Victim vaporizes her with his ray gun. If he does not vaporize her, Falling Person will survive her fall (Nozick 1974: 34). (Falling Person is typically described as an innocent or non-responsible threatener .)

According to the culpability account, Driver is not liable because she acts permissibly given her evidence, despite the risk she poses, and so is not culpable. Falling Person is not liable because she is not acting, and thus cannot be acting culpably. Yet many find it implausibly restrictive that Victim may not kill in self-defense in these cases. On the assumption that killing one person in defense of another is permissible only if the former is liable, a more permissive account of liability seems called for (we consider challenges to this assumption in §2 ).

The causal account of liability is most closely associated with Judith Jarvis Thomson. It holds that there is a single explanation of the permissibility of harming both culpable threateners, such as Attacker, and innocent threateners, such as Falling Person—namely, that each will violate Victim’s right not to be harmed unless Victim harms them (Thomson 1991). While most people grant that Attacker threatens to violate Victim’s right, the claim that Falling Person also threatens to violate Victim’s right is controversial.

Thomson argues that this follows from the fact that Falling Person in Ray Gun lacks a right to kill Victim. According to Thomson, this entails that Falling Person is under a duty not to kill Victim. Falling Person will fail in this duty—and thereby violate Victim’s right—just in case she does kill Victim. Since she is threatening to violate Victim’s right not to be killed, Falling Person lacks a right not to be killed. Hence, Victim may kill Falling Person to save his own life, even granting that Falling Person is morally innocent.

The causal account captures the intuitive permissibility of using defensive force against Falling Person in Ray Gun . It also permits killing morally responsible (but non-culpable) threateners such as Driver. But this broader scope of defensive permissions is secured, at least on Thomson’s construction, by endorsing the controversial view that one need not exercise agency in order to violate a right. Merely causing Victim’s death, when one lacks a right to do so, suffices. It also holds that one can be under a duty to refrain from doing something even if one is unable to refrain. Several commentators argue that Thomson’s view entails, implausibly, that falling stones can violate rights (McMahan 1994: 276, 2005a: 388; Otsuka 1994: 80; Zohar 1993: 608; Rodin 2002: 85–87). Stones lack rights to kill. Thus (it seems) Thomson must think stones under a duty not to kill. If so, they too must fail in this duty, and therefore violate rights, when they kill.

There seems to be at least some scope for Thomson to resist this move (Kamm 1992: 47). Those who believe that Falling Person has a right not to be killed must believe that, unlike a stone, Falling Person is a moral agent, assuming that only moral agents have rights. Restricted to moral agents, Thomson’s view avoids labelling stones rights-violators. Moreover, it is plausible that one can fail in a duty without exercising one’s agency, and also plausible that one can fail in a duty even if one is unable to fulfill that duty. For example, if I forget to meet you for lunch, despite promising to do so, I fail in my duty to keep my promise even if my forgetting is not a result of my agency, and I have no control over my forgetting.

However, Thomson’s reliance on causal roles makes it hard for her to prohibit harming at least some innocent people whom she herself considers it impermissible to harm. Plausibly, someone who maliciously blocks Victim’s escape from a fire is liable to defensive harm. If Thomson grants this, she must also grant the permissibility of harming a person who innocently blocks one’s escape (Frowe 2014a: 25–26). If the malicious obstructor plays the right kind of causal role to violate Victim’s rights, and violating rights does not require agency, then both innocent and malicious obstructors must be liable to defensive harm. Yet Thomson, in line with most people’s intuitions, explicitly rejects the permissibility of defensively harming innocent obstructors (Thomson 1991: 290).

The responsibility account holds that a person is liable for posing an unjust threat only if they are morally responsible for doing so (McMahan 1994, 2005a; Otsuka 1994; 2016). Michael Otsuka suggests that a threatener is morally responsible if she is

(1) of sound mind, (2) in control of her actions, and (3) aware of the dangerousness of what she is doing. (Otsuka 2016: 52)

A person can be morally responsible for a threat without being culpable. For example, consider cases of mistaken defense:

Mistake : Homeowner sees on the news that a dangerous murderer has escaped from the local prison. Victim, the murderer’s innocent identical twin, breaks down in his car near Homeowner’s house. Unaware of his brother’s escape, Victim rings the doorbell, intending to ask to use the phone. Homeowner mistakes Victim for his murderous brother, and takes aim at Victim with her shotgun. (McMahan 2005a: 387)

Victim has done nothing to forfeit his rights against being harmed: He poses no threat to Homeowner and lacks any intention to appear threatening. However, Homeowner’s evidence is that Victim poses a lethal threat to her. Victim is epistemically indistinguishable from a genuine threatener. Given this, Homeowner is not culpable or blameworthy for the fact that she threatens Victim. Nonetheless, it seems plausible that Homeowner is morally responsible for an objectively unjust threat to Victim. Defenders of the responsibility account hold that this renders Homeowner liable to defensive harm, which explains why Victim (or a third-party) is permitted to defensively kill her.

More controversially, Jeff McMahan argues that Driver in Conscientious Driver is morally responsible, though not culpable, for the threat she poses to Victim. Driver knows that driving is a risky activity and nonetheless chose to engage in it. Although driving is permissible relative to her evidence —she has no reason to think that she will lose control of the car—it is nonetheless impermissible relative to the facts , given that driving on this occasion will endanger Victim’s life. McMahan argues that Driver’s knowledge of the riskiness of driving, combined with the wrongness of this instance of driving, makes her liable to defensive harm. (McMahan 2005a: 394).

Proponents of the responsibility account often ground these verdicts in a particular conception of distributive justice, according to which fairness requires individuals to bear the costs of their own risk-imposing activities (McMahan 2005a; Otsuka 1994; see also Montague 1981; Draper 2009, 2016; Gordon-Solmon 2018). On this view, we should treat agents like Driver and Homeowner as engaging in moral gambles. If a gamble turns out badly and the agent ends up threatening harm to an innocent person, it is fairer that the gambler suffer harm, rather than the victims, because they are responsible for the fact that a harm now has to be borne by somebody (even if taking the gamble was justified according to the agent’s evidence). Hence, the agent who took the gamble forfeits her right not to be harmed for the sake of her victim. McMahan also argues that if two or more people bear responsibility for a threat of unjust harm, it is fair to make the most responsible person bear the full costs of preventing that harm, if defensive costs cannot be divided between them. On this view, liability has an important comparative dimension, and slight differences in responsibility can make a decisive difference to liability (McMahan 2011a: 551).

In contrast to agents like Homeowner and Driver, Falling Person is not plausibly morally responsible for the threat she poses, since she has been helplessly blown down the well by the wind. Despite her obvious causal connection to the threat to Victim’s life, the responsibility account holds that she is not liable to be defensively killed by Victim. Michael Otsuka supports this conclusion, arguing that since Falling Person is no more morally responsible for the fact that Victim’s life is in danger than a bystander, she has the same moral status as an innocent bystander. If killing bystanders is impermissible, then killing Falling Person is also impermissible (Otsuka 1994). The responsibility account yields a similarly restrictive verdict in the case of individuals who threaten as a result of temporary delusions or mental illness. Insofar as threateners are not morally responsible for their actions, they retain their usual rights against being harmed, even if they will otherwise kill other innocent people. The responsibility account thus permits killing a narrower range of threateners than the causal account, but a broader range than the culpability account.

We now turn to some worries for the responsibility account. One challenge is posed by cases such as Cell Phone :

Cell Phone : Unbeknown to Caller, a terrorist has rigged Caller’s cell phone such that when Caller next makes a phone call, he will detonate a bomb that will kill Victim.

McMahan argues that Caller is not liable to be killed because, unlike Driver, Caller has no reason at all to suspect that using his activity will endanger an innocent person. Since Caller does not knowingly risk harming Victim he is not morally responsible for posing a threat. But, despite McMahan’s suggestion that there is a difference in kind between cases like Driver and Caller, it seems more like a difference in degree (McMahan 2005a: 397). It is, clearly, not impossible that the phone is rigged. The difference is rather that, on Caller’s evidence, the chances of its being rigged are tiny, whereas Driver’s evidence suggests that she has a somewhat greater (but still very small) chance of harming an innocent person. McMahan’s account of moral responsibility thus depends on the idea that small differences in foreseeability are very morally significant. Driver is liable to be killed to save Victim; Caller is not.

More generally, some worry that the responsibility account rests on too thin a notion of moral responsibility. According to this objection, merely engaging in a foreseeably risky activity, and having bizarre bad luck, is not morally significant enough to defeat the weighty constraint on killing (Lazar 2009; see also, Burri 2020). This point seems especially forceful in cases in which a person’s evidence is that she is required , rather than merely permitted, to use force (Christie 2015: 75; Tadros 2011: 232–234). To illustrate, consider a variation on Mistake in which Victim’s twin is a notorious child-killer, and thus Homeowner’s evidence is that Victim will murder her child unless she uses force. Parents are plausibly required to defend their children against prospective murderers. Of course, Victim is not, in fact, a child-killer. But in this case, it is not obvious that we can point to Homeowner’s moral gamble to explain why it is fair that she forfeits her right not to be harmed. Gambles are typically optional: it is the fact that gamblers choose to engage in them, even though they could have done otherwise, that makes it fair for gamblers to bear the costs when their gambles turn out badly. By contrast, it seems unfair that Homeowner forfeits her rights by doing what her evidence tells her she is morally required to do (for a contrary view, see Quong 2020: 52–54).

One might also dispute the particular verdicts that proponents of the responsibility account believe help to vindicate their account. The claim that Driver is liable has proved particularly contentious. One objection holds that there is no obvious asymmetry between Driver and Victim in terms of responsibility and fairness. Rather, both agents bear moral responsibility for the fact that a lethal cost must be borne by someone, assuming that Pedestrian could foresee that she might be threatened by an out-of-control car whilst walking by the road. Given this, why should we conclude that Driver ought to bear the full cost rather than, say, toss a coin? (Lazar 2009: 715; see also, Ferzan 2012: 676–683). A different objection holds that Driver is not liable because he does not in fact threaten Victim’s rights. Jonathan Quong argues that we should distinguish between cases like Driver and Homeowner. Though each case involves an agent who acts permissibly relative to their evidence, there is an important moral difference between them. Quong argues that, given the overall benefits of permitting people to prudently drive, the practice of prudent driving is morally justified despite the risks it imposes. This assessment shapes our moral rights, such that we lack rights that other people refrain from prudent driving. Thus, the evidence-relative permissibility of Driver’s action does not depend on her mistaken assumption that Victim lacks a right not to be endangered by her. By contrast, Quong argues, the evidence-relative permissibility of Homeowner’s endangering Victim does depend on her mistaken assumption that Victim is liable to be killed. Homeowner treats Victim as if he lacks a right that he in fact possesses, and thereby fails to accord Victim the moral concern he is owned. Quong argues that it is this fact about how Homeowner treats Victim that grounds Homeowner’s liability to defensive harm (Quong 2012: 68; 2020: Chs. 2&6).

As these various challenges show, it is possible to accept the responsibility account’s central tenet that liability is grounded in moral responsibility for unjust threats, while nonetheless disagreeing about the correct account of moral responsibility, whether liability to defensive harm is a matter of distributive fairness, and/or the scope of our moral rights against harm.

1.3 Liability and Causation

One question is whether an agent can be liable only to harms that avert threats to which she causally contributes (the “local view”), or if her liability can instead extend to (at least some) harms that avert threats independently posed by others (the “global” view).

The local view tracks the idea that individuals should only be liable for threats that they are (in some sense) responsible for. But there are cases that cast doubt on this intuition. Consider:

Simultaneous Hit Men : Evelyn hires a hit man to kill Wayne. Fred has also hired a hit man to kill Wayne. Both hit men arrive at the same time. Because of where they are standing, Wayne’s only means of defense is to use Fred as a shield against Evelyn’s hit man (killing Fred) and Evelyn as a shield against Fred’s hit man (killing Evelyn). (Adapted from Tadros 2011: 192.)

The local view implies that Wayne’s use of defensive forces is impermissible, because he lethally uses Evelyn and Fred to prevent threats that neither are causally responsible for. But this seems very counter-intuitive, supporting a more global view (Tadros 2011: Ch.12)

However, an important challenge for the global view is whether it can impose a principled limit on the range of threats for which an individual can be liable. In Simultaneous Hit Men , the two threats are concurrent and qualitatively similar. But if we reject the idea that agents can be liable only to avert threats to which they causally contribute, then it is hard to see why agents are not potentially liable with respect to all manner of threats that are distant in space and time (McMahan 2005a: 763. For a defense of this implication, see Øverland 2011). Intuitively, it looks like we want a view that is global, but not too global, but a middle position might not be tenable.

Sometimes an agent does not pose a direct threat themselves, but instead contributes to threats posed by others. To what extent is an agent’s position in the causal chain morally relevant to liability, holding other factors equal?

One possibility appeals to the idea that there is a morally significant difference between doing harm and enabling others to cause harm. Applied to the question of defensive harm, one suggestion is that liability (or at least liability to being killed ) attaches only to direct threateners and does not transmit “down the chain” to contributors (Rodin 2008: 50, n.14; Haque 2017: 71–72). But this view seems quite restrictive:

Arrows : Andy is firing lethal poisoned arrows at Victim. Annabel makes the arrows and passes them to Annika. Annika dips the arrows in poison and passes them to Andy. Victim can only defend herself by lethally shooting Annika or Annabel (Based on a case in Frowe 2014a: 167)

If liability (or liability to be killed ) only attaches to direct threateners, then it looks like Annika and Annabel are not liable and so Victim is not permitted to defend herself. But this looks counter-intuitive: Annika and Annabel seem to be morally on a par with Andy. To deal with this kind of case, defenders of the “no transmission” idea need to add an exemption. For example, they might stipulate that liability transmits only if the causally remote agents are (in some sense) working together with the causally proximate agents to pose a threat (Rodin 2011b: 449; Haque 2017: 66). However, it is a matter of ongoing debate whether these modifications are successful (see Frowe 2014a: 167–172; 2019, forthcoming; Haque 2019).

A more modest view holds that both indirect and direct threateners can be similarly liable, but that the conditions of liability are more demanding in the case of indirect threateners. One defense of this asymmetry appeals to the idea that doing harm is harder to justify than enabling others to cause harm (Draper 2016: 143–144; Hosein 2019: 193–195). To illustrate, consider:

Gun 1 : Bad Guy threatens to kill Victim unless Victim shoots and kills an innocent person.

Gun 2 : Bad Guy’s gun is locked in a safe. Bad Guy threatens to kill Victim unless Victim gives Bad Guy the code for the safe. If Victim gives up the code, Bad Guy will use the gun to kill an innocent person. (Based on a case in Draper 2016: 143).

Many find it intuitive that it is impermissible for Victim to cause the death of an innocent person in the first case, but permissible in the second (or, at very least, that there is a significant moral difference between the two) (Draper 2016: 143–144). If we combine this putative asymmetry with the assumption that agents who are justified in causing harm are immune from liability (we discuss this assumption in §5 ), then it follows that there are cases in which an indirect threatener is not liable for enabling a threat, though she would have been liable had she posed that threat directly. (Note that this asymmetry is compatible with the view that enablers and direct threateners who lack justifications are equally liable [Frowe 2019: 629]). Of course, this view depends on the plausibility of the underlying claim that there is a relevant moral asymmetry between doing and enabling harm (for discussion, see Rickless 2011; Hanna 2015; Tadros 2018; Barry & Øverland 2016: Chs.5–6; Hurka 2005: 47–50).

If we think that the distinction between direct and indirect threateners marks a morally significant point in the causal chain, this raises the further question of whether we can also draw morally relevant distinction within the class of indirect threateners. For example, one possibility is that the liability of indirect threateners is sensitive to the degree of their remoteness from the threat (for discussion, see Tadros 2016a: 126–130).

A further issue is whether the size or degree of an individual’s causal contribution to a threat affects their liability. An affirmative answer seems quite intuitive. For example, several writers argue that civilian contributions to unjust wars are too causally insignificant to generate liability (or at least liability to defensive killing ) (Fabre 2009a: 60–61; McMahan 2009: 225) More precisely, the idea here is that (i) individuals can causally contribute to threats to a greater or lesser degree, and (ii) that the harm to which an individual is liable is sensitive to the degree of contribution.

Much of the debate takes (i) for granted and focuses on the plausibility of (ii). Some authors have challenged (ii) by highlighting cases in which killing intuitively “small-scale” contributors is intuitively permissible (Frowe 2014a: 78, 175). For example:

Bathtub : Bad Guy wants to drown Victim in the bathtub and offers a $20 reward for helpers. Bad Guy holds Victim down, while 110 Helpers each pour one liter of water into the bath. 100 liters are sufficient to kill Victim. (For a similar case, see Draper 2016: 82)

Each Helper contributes a tiny portion of the water that kills Victim, and each Helper’s contribution makes no difference to whether Victim is killed (the threat is overdetermined.) Yet it seems plausible that Victim is permitted to kill (at least) one Helper if doing so is necessary for escape.

More recently, attention has turned to whether (i) is defensible. The challenge here is two-fold. First, we might doubt the coherence of the view that causal contributions come in degrees (Sartorio 2020). Second, even if we can identify a metaphysically respectable account of scalar causal contribution, it is not clear that it will possess the kind of moral significance capable of determining liability (Tadros 2018; Beebee & Kaiserman 2020). However, work on the metaphysics of scalar causation is undergoing something of a renaissance. So perhaps we should not be overly skeptical about the prospects for vindicating the intuition that moral responsibility and liability are (in some way) sensitive to causal thresholds (for discussion, see Kaiserman 2017, 2018; Beebee & Kaiserman 2020; Bernstein 2017).

The preceding debates concern different ways in which causal connections might be relevant to liability. But, more radically, we might challenge the assumption that any causal connection to a threat is necessary for liability. Call this assumption the causal requirement . Here we set out three challenges to this requirement.

The first is the case of futile attempters . Consider the following case:

Firing Squad : Victim is a prisoner of war about to be wrongfully executed by a five riflemen execution squad. Only one of the rifles has real bullets, but none of the riflemen know which this is. Unbeknownst to them, Victim has a gun. Pre-emptively killing any of the riflemen will scare off the rest and allow Victim to escape. (Adapted from Christie 2020: 380)

If causation is necessary for liability, only the rifleman with real bullets can be liable. But this seems counter-intuitive. If Victim can escape only by killing one of the causally ineffective riflemen, it seems hard to believe that this would be much harder to justify than killing the causally effective rifleman (Christie 2020: 382). This suggests that merely attempting to pose a threat may be enough for liability to harm, at least if the attempter is culpable (Tadros 2016a: 121–124).

The second challenge to the causal requirement concerns omissions . Consider:

River : Jimmy accidentally falls into the river and will soon drown. Sally can easily pull Jimmy to safety, but she refrains because she doesn’t want to get her shoes wet. Jimmy can throw a rock at Sally, causing her to fall into the water and allowing Jimmy to drag himself to safety using Sally’s body. If he does this, one of Sally’s fingers will be eaten by piranhas.

Let’s assume that Sally is not initially required to rescue Jimmy at the cost of one of her fingers. However, some writers argue that Sally’s failure to discharge her duty to rescue Jimmy at a low cost to herself renders her morally responsible for his current predicament. This responsibility renders her liable to bear considerably greater costs for Jimmy’s sake (such as the loss of a finger), and Jimmy (as well as third-parties) may impose the costs of rescue on her (Barry & Øverland 2016: Ch.3; Barry 2018: 649; Tadros 2014a: 365. For the contrary view, that liability for failing to discharge a duty is restricted to the cost required by the initial duty, see Haque 2017: 70–71).

A third family of challenges to the causal requirement focus on the moral significance of certain relationships between causal and non-causal agent s (Bazargan 2013; Tadros 2014b). One view holds that non-causal complicity can render an agent liable. Consider:

Redundant Lookout : A gang carry out a bank robbery. One gang member—Bob—is tasked with acting as a lookout (though the gang would still have proceeded with the robbery in the absence of a lookout). However, Bob falls asleep immediately. During the robbery, the gang threaten to kill Witness. Passer-By spots the situation and realizes that the only way to save Witness is to shoot Bob, which will cause the robbers to flee. (Adapted from Bazargan 2013: 182–183)

Though Bob does not causally contribute to the threat to Witness, he nonetheless seems a legitimate target of defense. As Saba Bazargan argues (drawing on Kutz 2000), Bob is morally connected to the threat to Witness because Bob shares participatory intentions with the other gang members: an intention to “do his part” in the cooperative act of robbing the bank. On this view, an agent can be liable to harm to prevent threats posed by other members of a cooperative project in which she intentionally participates, even if her participation is not causally efficacious (Bazargan 2013: 184.)

One noteworthy implication of non-causal cases is that they can be appropriated in support of a version of the culpability account of liability (see §1.2.1 ). As we saw, the chief complaint against the culpability account is that it is too restrictive, rendering too many threateners non-liable. This objection suggests that culpability is not necessary for liability. However, the cases of attempters, omitters, and conspirators might be taken as evidence that culpability can be sufficient for liability (for related discussion, see Ferzan 2005, 2012: 689–696; McMahan 2005b: 751–768).

As the foregoing makes clear, no account of liability to is likely to match all our pre-theoretical intuitions about when we may use defensive force. Of course, we must sometimes revise our intuitions to fit the best theory. But some theorists suggest that we can resolve misalignments by positing an additional justification for defensive harm. On this view, the fact that a person is not liable to defensive harm (and harming them is not the lesser evil) does not entail that it is impermissible to harm them. Instead, defensive force may be permissible in virtue of the defender’s having an agent-relative prerogative to prefer their own interests (or the interests of others to whom they are specially related).

The notion of an agent-relative prerogative has traditionally been employed to explain why individuals are permitted to refrain from aiding others when it is costly to do so, rather than the permissibility of harming others (Scheffler 1982: 23). Yet, as critics point out, it is hard to see how the claim that one may attribute one’s own interests extra weight can be restricted in this way (Kagan 1989: 20). Of course, if causing harm is morally worse than allowing harm, this will make it harder to justify harming compared to failing to save. But this does not support the view that prerogatives are relevant to failing to aid, but irrelevant to harming.

Whilst originally conceived as an objection to the idea of prerogatives, several theorists of defensive harm embrace this conclusion, arguing that prerogatives (or the related notion of associative duties), play an important role in explaining the scope of permissible self- and other-defense (Levine 1984; Davis 1984; Quong 2009; 2020: Ch. 3; Fabre 2009b; 2012: 61; Lazar 2013). According to these writers, the extra weight that we may attach to our own interests, or the interests of special others, permits us to infringe others’ rights not to be harmed. Jonathan Quong argues that prerogatives provide an independent justification for harming, in addition to liability and lesser-evil justifications (Quong 2009; 2020: 70). Seth Lazar, in contrast, argues that the additional weight we must ascribe to the interests of special others, in light of our associative duties to them, affects what counts as the lesser-evil when acting in other-defense (Lazar 2013).

One important payoff of these views is that they can account for the permissibility of harming threateners such as Falling Person, Driver, and Caller without relying on the claim they are liable to be killed. Importantly, since we each have these prerogatives, it is permissible for non-liable threateners to employ counter-defense against defenders. For example, Falling Person and Victim have symmetrical defensive permissions on this view. Moreover, those who are permissibly harmed on the basis of an agent-relative prerogative or associative duty may also be owed compensation.

However, the main challenge for these views is to impose moral limits on the permission to harm the non-liable. Why, for example, does my personal prerogative not permit me to eat a baby if necessary to avoid starvation, or lethally trample over innocent obstructors? If one may kill a non-liable person to save oneself it looks as if many innocent bystanders will be rendered legitimate targets, alongside innocent threateners. Proponents of agent-relative permissions have defended additional principles that restrict the range of non-liable persons who may be permissible harmed (Quong 2009; 2016; 2020: 80–92; Lazar 2015). But their verdicts are nonetheless revisionary in many cases.

3. Proportionality

Even when an aggressor is liable to defensive harm, there are still important constraints on what may be done to them. Consider:

Slap : Angela is angry with Victoria for spilling tomato juice on Angela’s carpet and is about to slap her. The only way Victoria can defend herself is to kill Angela with her flamethrower.

Angela culpably poses an unjustified threat to Victoria, but it would obviously be morally wrong for Victoria to defend herself. Using the flamethrower would be disproportionate . The proportionality constraint holds that the bad effects of a defensive action must not be excessive in relation to the good achieved. Though seemingly simple and intuitive, things quickly become complex once we try to identify the factors relevant to proportionality judgments.

Whether the use of defensive force is proportionate depends on the status of the person it is imposed on. Consider:

Grenade : Andy attacks Victor. Victor can defend himself by throwing a grenade that will cause harm to both Andy and an innocent bystander, Billy.

In order to assess the proportionality of Victor’s defensive action, we cannot simply compare the magnitude of the threat Victor faces with the total amount of harm that Victor will cause. Proportionality also crucially depends on how the harm is allocated between Andy and Billy. As McMahan has influentially proposed, the permissibility of Victor’s use of force depends on two distinct proportionality assessments. Narrow proportionality assesses harms imposed on persons who, like Andy, are liable to some harm. The idea is that persons are not liable to harm simpliciter , but to a certain amount of harm. Narrow proportionality thus considers the upper limit on an individual’s forfeiture of their right against harm. By contrast, wide proportionality assesses harms imposed on non-liable persons like Billy. Here, the focus is on whether the good achieved by defense is sufficient to justify overriding an individual’s right against harm. Wide proportionality thus sets an upper limit to a lesser-evil justification for harm (McMahan 2009: 19–20).

Since narrowly disproportionate harms are those that exceed an individual’s liability, several writers have argued that harms to liable persons should be subject to both a narrow and wide proportionality assessment. On this view, there may be “combined justifications” for harming an individual, in which a portion of the harm inflicted justified in terms of their liability (and so is narrowly proportionate), while the remaining portion is justified as the lesser evil (and so is widely proportionate) (McMahan 2014a: 438–442; Bazargan 2014; Tadros 2011: Ch.11. For skepticism, see Steinhoff 2019).

Because narrow and wide proportionality assessments track very different kinds of justification for harm (liability and lesser-evil), the two assessments differ dramatically in their permissiveness. For example, it seems intuitive that it would be proportionate for Victor to inflict more harm on Andy than Andy threatens to impose on Victor. By contrast, in order to render harming Billy proportionate, the good that Victor thereby achieves would have to considerably exceed the harm done. A similar asymmetry applies when we consider proportionality and the numbers of persons defensively harmed. For example, killing one innocent person seems (widely) proportionate only if doing so saves a considerably larger number of innocent lives (recall Trolley from §1.1 ). By contrast, if one innocent person is being lethally attacked by a gang, it seems (narrowly) proportionate to kill a large (perhaps very large) number of attackers in order to protect the victim.

This last intuition has attracted considerable attention. While it seems intuitively proportionate to kill several culpable lethal attackers, many find it unacceptable that there is no limit on the number that may be killed. This implication seems particularly hard to swallow in the case of attackers who, though liable, are not fully culpable. But there is considerable theoretical difficulty in justifying such a limit. If, considered in isolation, each of the multiple attackers meets the conditions for liability to be killed, then it is hard to see how defensive killings that are each (narrowly) proportionate can somehow become disproportionate when aggregated. As Frances Kamm puts it:

One compares the wrong to be avoided with what would have to be done to each wrongdoer one at a time, and if there is no violation of proportionality in any individual comparison then there is no violation tout court. (Kamm 2011: 133–134)

This problem has generated a number of creative and complex solutions (for a rich discussion, see Tomlin 2020). One strategy holds that liability justifications for killing multiple aggressors can be overridden by the badness of killing (Rodin 2011a: 99; 2017). Related views appeal to the idea that the killing of liable persons leaves a 'residual injustice' (McMahan 2011b: 155–156) or to the notion of combined justifications (see above) to resolve the puzzle (Bazargan 2014). A more radical approach denies that each of the multiple aggressors is in fact liable (Gordon-Solmon 2017) or posits a sui generis proportionality constraint (McMahan 2017).

Several theorists argue that narrow proportionality judgments should be sensitive to the culpability of the liable individual (McMahan 2005a: 394; Bazargan 2014; Rodin 2011a: 82–84). On this view, an individual may be liable to a certain amount of defensive harm for posing a threat if they do so fully culpably, but to some lesser amount of harm to the extent that they possess a valid excuse. For example, duress or intoxication may provide an agent with a partial excuse for posing a threat, while an agent who threatens on the basis of false, but reasonable, beliefs may be fully non-culpable.

However, Jonathan Quong has recently argued that this view generates counter-intuitive results. Consider:

Muggings : Dave decides to violently mug another person and has no responsibility-diminishing excuse for doing so. Eric threatens to do exactly the same thing to a different person, but is partially excused as a result of some mild coercion by others.

Assaults : As a prank, Frank’s friends gave him three alcoholic drinks that Frank believed were non-alcoholic. Frank is now mildly drunk. He threatens to wrongfully assault a man at the bar. Gary is sober, but he threatens to wrongfully assault a man at the bar with the same degree of force as Frank. (Quong 2020: 116)

Quong argues that it is counter-intuitive to think that there is some amount of harm that it is would be proportionate to inflict on Dave but not Eric, or on Gary but not Frank. Instead, a person’s degree of liability is set by the importance of the right they threaten, and not their level of culpability.

In addition to the questions of who is harmed and how much , it has also been suggested that proportionality judgments are sensitive to also the way in which harm is brought about (the “mode of agency”). For example, non-consequentialists typically endorse at least some of the following claims:

• Causing harm is harder to justify than allowing harm to occur.
• Intentionally causing harm is harder to justify than causing harm as an unintended side-effect.
• Harming a person in a way that uses that person as a means is harder to justify than harming a person in way that does not use them as a means.
• Directly causing harm is harder to justify than enabling other people to cause harm.
• Causing harm is harder to justify than preventing harm from being prevented.

If any of these moral asymmetries are plausible, then it seems natural to weight them in proportionality assessments (Rodin, 2011; McMahan 2014b). On this view, it may be proportionate to cause harm via one mode of agency, but disproportionate to cause an identical level of harm to the same person(s) via a different mode.

One interesting question is whether modes of agency apply differently in assessments of narrow and wide proportionality. For example, one might hold that if a person is liable to a harm, then it is morally irrelevant how that harm is brought about. Alternatively, we might think that narrow proportionality assessments should be sensitive to at least some of these moral distinctions. For example, it might be argued that an agent is liable to a certain level of harm that prevents them from posing a threat, but is liable to a lesser harm that involves using her as a means (McMahan 2009: 219–221). On this view, persons are not liable simply to a certain level of harm, but rather to a certain level of harm brought about in a certain way (Gordon-Solmon 2019).

3.4 The Goods of Proportionality

Here we consider some questions about the relevant good effects of defensive action that are relevant to proportionality assessments.

In typical cases, the relevant good effects seem obvious: preventing (or mitigating) the threat of harm to the victim(s). But other cases suggest that additional goods might be admissible. Consider:

Interrupted Rescue: Valerie is about to rescue Billy when she is wrongfully attacked by Amanda. Amanda’s attack will break Valerie’s finger, which will prevent Valerie from rescuing Billy. Valerie can stop Amanda’s attack only by imposing serious harm on her (for a similar case, see Draper 2016: 110)

Valerie’s use of defensive force has two good effects. It prevents the threat to her finger and prevents the opportunity cost of not saving Billy (on opportunity costs and defensive harm, see McMahan 2014: 4–6; Draper 2016: 109–115; Oberman 2019: 199–202). It seems plausible that preventing the opportunity cost can contribute to rendering harming Amanda proportionate: Valerie may impose more harm on Amanda than she would if only her finger were at stake. The difficult question is how much additional harm. Is Amanda liable to lethal harm, given that her attack endangers Billy’s life? This will depend on, among other things, whether there are differences between liability for causing harm and liability for preventing people from being saved.

A victim of unjust attack suffers two distinct bads: the harm caused and the wrong done (Kamm 2014: 75–76). The first is grounded in the victim’s wellbeing , the second in their moral status . One suggestion is that that the value of avoiding wrongs should feature in proportionality assessments (Uniacke 2011: 260). For example, perhaps it is permissible to cause more harm to innocents in the course of rescuing victims of a fire that has been started by an arsonist, compared to a fire started by lightning strike.

Even if we are skeptical that avoiding wrongs permits causing additional harm on innocents, one might nonetheless argue that it is permissible to impose greater harm on liable persons who threaten more serious wrongs, but equal harm. (Quong 2020:107–114) To illustrate, consider:

Negligent Side-Effect : Anthony is hiking and negligently causes rocks to fall towards innocent Violet below, which will harm her to degree H .

Negligent Useful : Anish negligently forms the false belief that Vania has unjustifiably pushed a boulder towards an innocent person. Vania in fact poses no threat to anybody. Anish pushes Vania in front of the boulder in an effort to stop (what he believes to be) her unjust threat, which will harm Vania to degree H . (Based on similar cases in Quong 2020: 98–99)

Both Anish and Anthony threaten an identical quantity of harm to an innocent person. But if we are sympathetic to the idea that usefully harming an innocent person is a graver wrong than unintentionally harming an innocent person as a side-effect, then we might also conclude that Anish is liable to more defensive harm than Anthony.

The gravity of a rights violations might also be sensitive to the existence of special relationships . For example, it seems a greater wrong to be harmed by someone who has a special duty to protect us (such as one’s parent, or a police officer), compared to someone who lacks that duty (Gardner 2013: 105–108). If so, this additional wrongfulness may support a more permissive narrow proportionality judgment.

4. Necessity

Even when the use of force satisfies the proportionality requirement, it may nonetheless be morally impermissible. For example, if Victim can avert a lethal threat only by either killing Attacker or breaking Attacker’s arm, it would be wrong to kill Attacker. Though proportionate, killing would be unnecessary in this case. As standardly understood, the necessity constraint requires defenders to compare the available means of averting a threat, rank them according to some relevant moral criteria, and use only the means that is favored by that ranking.

By what criteria should we rank the available means of defense? One intuitive suggestion is the we should rank defensive options according to their harmfulness. On this view, necessity requires defenders to use the least harmful means of averting a threat. However, this proposal requires modification. Consider Ledge :

Ledge : Victim can save his own life by either (a) pushing his culpable attacker, Villain, off a ledge, breaking Villain’s leg, or (b) jumping off the ledge himself, breaking his own arm.

If it is permissible for Victim to break Villain’s leg, and only necessary defense is permissible, breaking Villain’s leg must be necessary. But (we assume) a broken leg is more harmful than a broken arm. How, then, can pushing Villain be necessary for saving Victim’s life, given Victim’s available alternative of jumping at the cost of breaking his own arm? One influential proposal (which we touched on in §3.1 ), is that harms to which a person is liable count for less than harms to which a person is not liable. Since Villain is liable to defensive harm, we can discount Villain’s interests relative to Victim’s interests (as well as the interests of any bystanders) (Lazar 2012:7; McMahan 2016:185). On this view, necessity requires defenders to use the defensive option which causes the least morally-discounted harm.

To be plausible, the necessity constraint must be limited to comparing alternatives that are genuinely available to the defender. Even if an expertly-delivered karate chop could harmlessly render Villain unconscious, this does not make harming Villain unnecessary if Victim is not an expert in karate, even if it is, in some sense, physically possible for Victim to deliver such a blow. It also seems plausible that “availability” should be understood in terms of the defender’s evidence. A hidden trapdoor might offer Victim a means of escaping Attacker without using defensive force. But if Victim has no evidence of this trapdoor, the presence of this less harmful means cannot render force unnecessary (for discussion, see Steinhoff 2019: 174–181).

Necessity is also sensitive to the different probabilities of success of various defensive options. Imagine that in Murder , Victim can either kill Attacker, which has a .9 chance of saving Victim’s life, or break Attacker’s arm, which has a .1 chance of saving Victim’s life. We are likely to think that killing Attacker counts as necessary despite the chance that a much smaller harm could also save Victim’s life. But our intuitions might change as we increase the chances of success of the lesser harm. If breaking Attacker’s arm has a .7 chance of saving Victim’s life, perhaps killing Attacker does not satisfy the necessity constraint.

The relationship between necessity and liability is contested. Consider Jump and Poison :

Jump : Gunman is shooting at Victim, trying to kill him. He chases Victim to the edge of a cliff. Unbeknown to Gunman, Victim has a parachute he can use to jump to safety at little risk to himself. Victim also has a gun that he can use to shoot Gunman.

Poison : Adversary has been slowly poisoning Victim over several weeks. Victim has already consumed a lethal dose of the poison (for which there is no antidote) and will certainly die no matter what.

Internalists argue that a person can be liable only to the least harmful means of averting a threat. On this view, liability has an internal necessity constraint (McMahan 2009: 9). Since Victim can avoid harm by using the parachute in Jump , harming Gunman is unnecessary for averting the threat Gunman poses. Thus, Gunman is not liable to defensive harm. In Poison , harming Adversary is unnecessary because it is pointless. Nothing can be done to avert Adversary’s threat to Victim, and so Adversary cannot be liable to defensive harm.

An advantage of internalism is that it captures the intuitive wrongness of unnecessary force. A disadvantage is that it implies that even culpable attackers may harm their victims in counter-defense, should their victims use unnecessary force against them. If Gunman in Jump is not liable to defensive harm, then any harm he suffers is unjust. It is Victim, then, who seems to be liable to be harmed, should he defend himself rather than jump.

Jeff McMahan and Kaila Draper each argue that internalism can avoid this conclusion because Gunman is more morally responsible than Victim for the fact that someone—either he or Victim—must suffer a harm (McMahan 2011a: 551; Draper 2016: 108). But it is unclear why Gunman is more responsible for this fact, since it is Victim’s responsible choice that makes harm unavoidable. Gunman may be more blameworthy for trying to kill Victim than Victim is for trying to kill Gunman. But this does not entail that Gunman is more responsible than Victim for the threat that Victim poses to Gunman. Another possibility is to distinguish between one’s liability to harm, and one’s right to defend oneself. We might think that Gunman has a right not to be killed, since killing him is unnecessary, but that his responsibility for the initial threat to Victim makes it impermissible for him to harmfully defend himself if Victim forcefully responds to that threat. (For more on this separation, see McMahan 2013; Frowe 2015.)

The standard externalist view holds that a person’s liability is determined by facts about her and what she has done, and not any facts about the defensive options available to defenders. Since both Gunman and Adversary culpably pose unjust threats to Victim, each is liable to defensive force. This suggests that Victim does not wrong either by killing them, and that neither may kill Victim in self-defense.

Proportionate means externalism , in contrast, distinguishes between Gunman and Adversary (Frowe 2014a: 105). On this view, one can be liable to harm that is not the least harmful means of averting a threat, provided that the harm is a means of averting the threat and proportionate to the good secured. Killing Gunman is a means of averting the threat he poses, and is proportionate to saving Victim’s life. Gunman is thus liable to defensive harm on this view. In contrast, since harming Adversary cannot avert the threat she poses, she is not liable to harm.

Externalist views struggle to capture the intuition that even liable people are wronged by being knowingly unnecessarily harmed. Externalists can grant only that unnecessary force is impersonally wrong, and that harming Gunman is all-things-considered impermissible in light of this impersonal wrong. This implication looks especially worrying when it comes to unnecessarily harming non-culpable threateners, such as Homeowner in Mistake , who threatens Victim only because she reasonably believes that Victim poses a lethal unjust threat to her. If Victim can save his own life simply by stepping aside, rather than killing Homeowner, he seems to wrong Homeowner if he instead decides to kill Homeowner as a means of saving his own life. Homeowner seems to have a legitimate complaint against Victim. We might also think that she (or her beneficiaries) are entitled to compensation.

The partialist account responds to this challenge by combining an externalist view of when a person forfeits her usual right not to be harmed with a claim about our humanitarian rights (Firth and Quong 2012; Quong 2020: 145–149). According to this account, people responsible for unjust threats only partially forfeit their rights against being harmed. Even culpable threateners retain a humanitarian right not to be seriously harmed when others can avoid harming them at low cost to themselves. This humanitarian right is grounded in our urgent needs and cannot be forfeited. Thus, on this view, Gunman and Adversary are only partially liable to harm, since Victim can avoid harming each at little or no cost to herself. The fact that harming them will violate their humanitarian rights explains why such unnecessary harm wrongs them.

The necessity requirement involves comparing and ranking options. But what range of options should be compared? A standard assumption is that the necessity requirement adjudicates between available means of saving particular victims from particular threats (McMahan 2013: 2). This assumption has been recently challenged (Oberman 2020; Tadros 2016b; Frowe forthcoming: 8). Consider Trolley Choice and Choice :

Trolley Choice : Trolley A is lethally heading towards five people, and can be lethally diverted towards Workman. Trolley B is lethally heading towards five different people, and can be diverted down an empty side-track. Bystander has time to divert only one trolley. (Frowe forthcoming: 8)

Choice : Attacker is trying to unjustly kill Alice. Defender can prevent this only by killing Attacker. Villain is trying to kill Vicky. Defender can prevent this by making a loud noise that will deter Villain. Defender has time to save either Alice or Vicky, but not both. (For discussion of similar cases, see Oberman 2020)

It is intuitively impermissible for Bystander to divert Trolley A in Trolley Choice , killing Workman. And this impermissibility seems to be grounded in the fact that harming Workman is unnecessary for securing the good of saving five lives. If so, the standard view of the scope of necessity is mistaken. Necessity does not adjudicate only between means of achieving precisely the same end, but is also sensitive to options to achieve morally equivalent or better ends (Oberman 2020). This, in turn, gives us reason to doubt the permissibility of killing Attacker in Choice . Killing Attacker is necessary for saving Alice . But it is not necessary for saving a life .

Consider Multiple Threats :

Multiple Threats : Victim is simultaneously, but independently, attacked by Attacker and Villain, who are equally culpable. Each is trying to kill Victim. Victim can disable Attacker by inflicting 10 units of harm on him. This will also deter Villain. Victim can also disable Villain by inflicting 20 units of harm on him. This will also deter Attacker. (Adapted from Tomlin 2020: 356)

As we saw in §3.1 it is common to treat liability as a one-to-one relationship between a threatener and her victim (McMahan 2017: 5; Rodin 2011a: 99; Kamm 2011: 134–135). On this approach, we ask whether Attacker, rather than Victim, ought to suffer harm, and then, separately, whether Villain, rather than Victim, ought to suffer harm. This assumes that we can judge the necessity of harming Attacker independently of the necessity of harming Villain, and vice versa. But in Multiple Threats , Victim needs to harm only Attacker or Villain to save himself. Harming both violates the necessity constraint, but we can see this only by moving beyond the one-to-one relationship between Victim and each threatener. Moreover, it seems that necessity dictates which of the two should be harmed: Victim should disable Attacker, since this is less harmful than disabling Villain, and achieves the same end of saving Victim (Tomlin 2020; see also Draper 2016: 114–115). If, as McMahan argues, necessity is internal to liability, liability cannot be about these one-to-one relationships either. Rather, liability must involve comparisons across threateners.

A further difficulty with judging necessity arises when a defender bears responsibility for the range of available defensive options. Consider Damage :

Damage : Villain wrongly tries to kill Victim. Victim can protect himself by non-lethally stunning Villain with his Taser, or shooting Villain dead with his gun. Victim destroys his Taser. He can now prevent the attack only by killing Villain.

It seems unlikely that a defender satisfies necessity if they deliberately deprive themselves of less harmful means of defense, at least if they do so at the time of the attack. We might think that earlier choices also preclude satisfying necessity. For example, imagine that Victim knew that there was a high chance that Villain would try to kill him today, and decided to leave his Taser at home. If Victim violates necessity by killing Villain in Damage , he plausibly also does so by killing Villain after deliberately leaving the Taser at home (Schwartz 2020: 3). Of course, this verdict becomes less plausible as we increase the costs to the defender of maintaining defensive options.

Daniel Schwartz suggests that even if Victim’s lethal defense in Damage violates necessity, this does not entail that Victim acts impermissibly. Schwartz argues that Villain’s death could be construed as the lesser evil compared to Victim’s death. He proposes a distinction between excessive harm (which is unnecessary, yet achieves a valuable goal), and wanton harm (which achieves nothing valuable). In general, excessive harms that are part of a defensive action are, Schwartz claims, less bad than wanton harms of the sort that Villain threatens to impose on Victim. Thus, Victim can have a lesser-evil justification for imposing excessive harm on Villain to prevent Villain imposing wanton harm on her (Schwartz 2020: 9–11).

Cases of provocation also raise questions about how a defender’s responsibility for the necessity of using force bears on the permissibility of defense. Consider Provoke :

Provoke : Enemy wants to punch Rival. Enemy insults Rival’s mother, intending to cause Rival to attack him. Rival prepares to punch Enemy. Enemy can prevent this only by punching Rival in self-defense.

Kimberly Ferzan argues that although it is impermissible for Rival to punch Enemy, and Enemy is not liable to be harmed, it is also impermissible for Enemy to defend himself by punching Rival (Ferzan 2013: 615). Since Enemy has unjustifiably engineered the situation in which force against Rival is necessary to avert a threat to himself, Enemy lacks defensive rights against Rival’s predicted response (Ferzan 2013: 616).

On Ferzan’s view, Enemy may not defend himself against being punched, since this is what he predicts Rival will do. But Enemy retains his defensive rights against harms that exceed those he expects Rival to inflict. As Lisa Hecht points out, adopting this type of proportionality constraint for provocateurs produces a counterintuitive asymmetry between provocateurs and ordinary threateners (Hecht 2019: 171–173). According to Ferzan, a provocateur who foresees a lethal response to an insult lacks a right to defend herself against lethal harm. In contrast, a threatener whose punch elicits a lethal response has a right to defend herself against lethal harm. And yet the threatener commits a much more serious wrong than the provocateur. It seems odd, therefore, that the provocateur forfeits her defensive rights to a greater degree.

When an aggressor is liable to be harmed, they are typically morally prohibited from using counter-defense to thwart their victim’s justified use of defensive force. Moreover, third-parties may intervene only on behalf of the victim. We might think that this result holds more generally: If one party is justified in harming another, it follows that the other party is not justified in responding with defensive force. This view avoids the purportedly

paradoxical result that each of two people is justified in trying to bring about the death of the other while keeping himself alive. (Waldron 2000: 715)

However, as we have seen, liability justifications are not the only the only possible justification for causing harm. Sometimes agents may infringe others’ rights not to be harmed, either because doing so is the lesser-evil or (more controversially) because the agent has an agent-relative justification. In these cases, the victim faces a threat of harm to which she is not liable. Are these victims permitted to defend themselves?

Consider a variation on Trolley :

Defensive Trolley : A runaway trolley is lethally heading towards five innocent people. Engineer is about to divert the trolley away from the five towards Workman, who will be killed. Workman can prevent the diversion by throwing a grenade that will destroy the switch, but also kill Engineer. The five will be hit by the trolley. (Frowe 2018: 475, revising a case in Quong 2016: 826)

Assume that Engineer has a lesser-evil justification for killing Workman. Is it permissible for Workman to defend himself against Engineer? Many people have the intuition that it is. These cases thus challenge the view that defensive permissions are necessarily asymmetric.

The debate about harming justified threateners focuses on two key questions (see Mapel 2010 for helpful discussion). First, what is the moral status of justified threateners: are they liable to defensive force? Second, is defensively harming justified threateners morally permitted , all things considered?

Several writers argue that that justified threateners are liable (Steinhoff 2008; 2019: Ch.3; Rodin 2011a: 86–87; Hosein 2014; Draper, 2016: 67–68). On this view, posing a threat of unjust harm is a sufficient ground for liability; the fact that the threat is justified makes no difference. One source of support for this idea is that people whose rights are justifiably transgressed are typically thought to be entitled to compensation for the harms they suffer (Steinhoff 2008: 223–224; Gardner 2011: 42). However, not all claims to compensation for suffering a harm entail a claim to prevent that harm. For example, homeowners are entitled to compensation when their houses are demolished to make way for a new road, but it does not follow that they may forcefully prevent the demolition of their houses.

Some writers deny that agents such as Engineer are liable, arguing that “justification defeats liability” (McMahan 2005a: 399; 2008; 2014; Frowe 2018: 476; Quong 2016: 826). This claim is often defended by appeal to a deeper account of the basis of liability. For example, McMahan argues that if we accept the view that

the assignment of liability follows the distribution of harm in accordance with the demands of justice, (McMahan 2008: 234)

it follows that

there is no reason that justice would demand that unavoidable harm be distributed towards [justified threateners], (2008: 234)

and so these threateners are exempt from liability. Similarly, Quong (2016, 2020) holds that if liability is grounded in treating others as though they lack rights, then justified threateners do not incur liability (since their actions are justified in spite of their victim’s rights.)

On the question of permissibility, those who believe that Engineer is liable to be killed typically hold that Workman may kill Engineer in self-defense, even if this prevents the saving of the five (Steinhoff 2008: 221). Among those who deny Engineer’s liability, opinion is divided. Proponents of agent-relative prerogatives, such as Quong, hold that Workman is permitted to kill Engineer, at least when this does not prevent the saving of the five (Quong 2016: 827). By contrast, McMahan argues that killing Engineer is impermissible, though Workman may harmlessly prevent the saving of the five in order to save his own life (for example, by remotely jamming the switch that diverts the trolley) (McMahan 2014: 111).

A stronger view holds that Workman may not even harmlessly prevent the five’s being saved, and may not kill Engineer to save himself even after the five are saved (Frowe 2018: 476–478). Frowe argues that agents are typically required to act on lesser-evil justifications for defending others. If morality requires Engineer to divert the trolley, it cannot also permit Workman to prevent the trolley’s being diverted. And since Engineer is not liable to be killed, and killing her is not the lesser evil, it is impermissible for Workman to kill Engineer to save his own life.

6. Defending Others

What is the relationship between the morality of self-defense and the morality of defending others? One natural view is that the two share the same underlying rationale, such that the permissibility of other-defense goes “hand-in-hand” with the permissibility of self-defense (Thomson 1991: 306). This seems most plausible in the case of liable attackers. Since the justification for harming such person’s rests on the “entirely impersonal” fact that they have forfeited their ordinary right against harm, it seems plausible that that any suitably situated person may act on that justification (Thomson 1991: 308).

However, as explained in §2 , some writers deny that all justifications for defensive harm are impersonal (or “agent-neutral”) in this way. Proponents of agent-relative permissions hold that some justifications apply only to defense of oneself (or of others to whom one is specially related). If this view is correct, then the permissibility of self and other-defense will often come apart. For example, it may be permissible for an individual to kill an innocent person in order to defend her own life (and perhaps also permissible for her loved ones to kill to save her), but impermissible for third-parties to do so (on whether agent-relative justifications can be transferred, see Bazargan-Forward 2018; Lazar 2015.

Self-defense is typically assumed to be morally optional: victims are permitted to refrain from use defensive force. By contrast, we might think that defending others is presumably morally required (at least if the costs of doing so are not excessive).

This claim is most intuitive when it comes to defending innocent victims from culpable attackers (Fabre 2007). But it is controversial when defending others requires harming innocent persons as the lesser-evil. Recall Trolley , in which Engineer can, at no risk to herself, save five by lethally diverting a trolley towards Workman. Comparatively little attention has been paid to whether Engineer is morally required (and not merely permitted) to save the five. Those who consider the question typically argue that saving is supererogatory, because Engineer cannot be morally compelled to kill Workman (Thomson 1985: 1406; Alexander 2005: 618; Walen & Wasserman 2012: 554).

However, if killing Workman is indeed justified as the lesser-evil, this means that Engineer can prevent serious harm to others at no risk to herself, and without imposing a disproportionate cost on anyone else. If we are normally under a duty to aid when these conditions are met, then diverting towards Workman should also be morally required. The challenge is to explain why acting on lesser-evil justifications should be excluded from the more general duty to rescue (Frowe 2018: 465–466).

Several theorists argue that defending others is subject to an additional moral requirement: that the beneficiary of defense must consent to being defended (or, more plausibly, that the beneficiary must not validly refuse ) (Fabre 2009b: 159–160; Finlay 2010: 292; Parry 2017: 358).

There are different ways of understanding the rationale behind the consent requirement. On one view, the right to use defensive force initially applies only to the victim of aggression. In order for third-parties to be permitted to use force against the aggressor, this right must be “transferred” by the victim (Fabre 2009b: 158). An alternative approach focuses on the victim’s welfare, rather than their rights (Parry 2017: 370–376). On this view, the consent requirement is grounded in the anti-paternalist idea that we may not act “for the good” of another person if they refuse to be benefited (on paternalism, see Dworkin 2002 [2020]). If a victim validly refuses defensive assistance, then defenders cannot justify harming the aggressor by appeal to the benefit it would provide to the victim.

The consent requirement rests on the idea that victims occupy a privileged position within the ethics of defensive harm: It’s their rights and interests that are at stake, so they get to decide whether they are defended. One important objection denies that victims have exclusive control over whether others may act on justifications for harming aggressors. For example, one might argue that victims’ lives and interests are agent-neutrally valuable, and so any agent may act to preserve that value, regardless of the victim’s will (Lazar 2016: 217). The plausibility of this objection will depend on its implications in other cases of non-consensual benefiting. Alternatively, one might argue that we have moral reasons to prevent wrongful attacks that are distinct from the moral reasons to protect victim’s lives and welfare. Perhaps wrongdoing is impersonally bad (Parfit 2017: 354–357; see also, Kamm 2014: 75–76) or bad for the wrongdoer (Tadros 2016c: 1–2, 164; Brownlee 2019). Either way, the consent sceptic can say to the victim: “it’s not all about you !” The success of these objections will depend on whether these alternative moral reasons for defending victims are sufficiently strong to justify harming and killing (for skepticism, see Parry 2017: 379–382; Oberman 2020: 447–452).

One interesting puzzle about the consent requirement is how it applies in cases where multiple victims are threatened, and some victims refuse while others do not. One obvious answer is to adopt a majoritarian interpretation of the consent requirement. But this view generates counter-intuitive results. Consider the following example:

Abuse: Your alcoholic neighbor is mercilessly beating his five adult children. You can rescue the children by defensively harming the neighbor. Four children explicitly and competently refuse defense, while one consents. Are you required to defer to the wishes of the majority in this case? (adapted from Altman & Wellman 2008: 244)

Many find it intuitive that defense would be permissible, despite the refusal of the majority. This tracks the more general idea that individuals’ basic rights place limits on majority rule. Reflection on this kind of case has led many to conclude that the consent requirement imposes only a minimal constraint in multiple victim cases: Provided some member(s) of the victim group do(es) not validly refuse, the consent requirement is satisfied (Altman & Wellman 2008: 243–245; McMahan 2010: 52; Frowe 2014b: 109).

This skepticism has recently been challenged in favor of a more robust interpretation of the requirement (Parry 2017). On this view, if a victim validly refuses defensive assistance, we must exclude the benefit of rescue to that victim when evaluating whether the use of force is proportionate. Defending a group is permissible only if the benefits to the non-refusing victims is sufficient to render defense proportionate. Hence, this is known as the “Proportionate Consent Requirement” (PCR).

The PCR captures the judgment that other-defense is permissible in Abuse . Since it would be proportionate to harm the father in order to defend just one victim, it is permissible to do so provided one victim consents. However, in other cases the justification for defending a group does requires appealing to the good of many victims (and potentially every victim). Consider:

Elevator : Five Victims are riding in an elevator. Aggressor begins to saw through the elevator cable in order kill Victims. Rescuer is able to kill Aggressor by throwing a grenade, thereby saving Victims. However, the blast from the grenade will kill innocent Bystander as a side-effect (Parry 2017: 385).

Let’s assume that it is permissible to kill one innocent person as a side-effect of saving five innocent persons, but not four. In Elevator, the permissibility of using defensive force involves appealing to the good of every member of the victim group. However, since four members have refused intervention on their behalf, the PCR holds that this refusal renders it impermissible to intervene. The good of the single consenting member of the group is insufficient to justify killing the innocent bystander as a side-effect. Indeed, in this case, the PCR holds that defense is only permissible if every victim consents (or does not validly refuse).

One important worry for the PCR is whether it is vulnerable to the same objection that plagued the majoritarian view. If it is objectionable to give a majority the power to veto the defense of a consenting minority, it seems even more objectionable to give a minority of dissenting victims the power to veto the defense of a much larger number of victims.

In this entry, for reasons of space, we have focused primarily on the moral principles that govern the objective (or fact-relative) permissibility of defensive harm. Of course, this leaves open questions about how defensive agents ought to act in light of their evidence and under conditions of uncertainty. While the majority of the debate has also centered on questions of objective permissibility, there is growing literature exploring the subjective (or evidence-relative) ethics of defensive harm (and non-consequentialist moral principles more generally) (see, for example, Tomlin 2019; Haque 2017; Bolinger 2017, 2021, forthcoming; Frowe 2010; Lazar 2018, 2019a, 2019b; van der Vossen 2016).

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• Podcast: Jonathan Quong on Self-Defense
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5.2 Self-Defense

Learning objectives.

• Define self-defense.
• Define deadly force.
• Ascertain the four elements required for self-defense.
• Ascertain two exceptions to the unprovoked attack requirement.
• Define the battered wife defense, and explain its justification under the imminence requirement.
• Analyze when it is appropriate to use deadly force in self-defense.
• Distinguish between the duty to retreat and stand-your-ground doctrines.
• Define imperfect self-defense.

As stated previously, self-defense is a defense based on justification . Self-defense can be a defense to assault, battery, and criminal homicide because it always involves the use of force. In the majority of states, self-defense is a statutory defense (Mich. Comp. Laws, 2010). However, it can be modified or expanded by courts on a case-by-case basis.

Most states have special requirements when the defendant uses deadly force in self-defense. Deadly force is defined as any force that could potentially kill. An individual does not have to actually die for the force to be considered deadly. Examples of deadly force are the use of a knife, gun, vehicle, or even bare hands when there is a disparity in size between two individuals.

Self-defense can operate as a perfect or imperfect defense, depending on the circumstances. Defendants who commit criminal homicide justified by self-defense can be acquitted, or have a murder charge reduced from first to second or third degree, or have a charge reduced from murder to manslaughter. Criminal homicide is discussed in detail in Chapter 9 “Criminal Homicide” .

To successfully claim self-defense, the defendant must prove four elements. First, with exceptions, the defendant must prove that he or she was confronted with an unprovoked attack. Second, the defendant must prove that the threat of injury or death was imminent . Third, the defendant must prove that the degree of force used in self-defense was objectively reasonable under the circumstances. Fourth, the defendant must prove that he or she had an objectively reasonable fear that he or she was going to be injured or killed unless he or she used self-defense. The Model Penal Code defines self-defense in § 3.04(1) as “justifiable when the actor believes that such force is immediately necessary for the purpose of protecting himself against the use of unlawful force by such other person on the present occasion.”

Provocation

In general, if the defendant initiates an attack against another, the defendant cannot claim self-defense (State v. Williams, 2010). This rule has two exceptions. The defendant can be the initial aggressor and still raise a self-defense claim if the attacked individual responds with excessive force under the circumstances, or if the defendant withdraws from the attack and the attacked individual persists.

Excessive Force Exception

In some jurisdictions, an individual cannot respond to the defendant’s attack using excessive force under the circumstances (State v. Belgard, 2010). For example, an individual cannot use deadly force when the defendant initiates an attack using nondeadly force . If an individual does resort to deadly force with a nondeadly force attack, the defendant can use reasonable force in self-defense.

Example of the Excessive Force Exception

Patty and Paige get into an argument over a loan Patty made to Paige. Paige calls Patty a spoiled brat who always gets her way. Patty slaps Paige across the face. Paige grabs a carving knife from the kitchen counter and tries to stab Patty. Patty wrestles the knife away and stabs Paige in the chest, killing her. In this example, Patty provoked the attack by slapping Paige across the face. However, the slap is nondeadly force . In many jurisdictions, Paige cannot respond to nondeadly force with deadly force , like a knife. Paige used excessive force in her response to Patty’s slap, so Patty can use deadly force to defend herself and may not be responsible for criminal homicide under these circumstances.

Withdrawal Exception

In some jurisdictions, the defendant can be the initial aggressor and still use force in self-defense if the defendant withdraws from the attack, and communicates this withdrawal to the attacked individual (N.Y. Penal Law, 2010). If the attacked individual persists in using force against the defendant after the defendant’s withdrawal, rather than notifying law enforcement or retreating, the defendant is justified in using force under the circumstances.

Example of Withdrawal

Change the excessive force exception example in Section 5 “Example of the Excessive Force Exception” . Imagine that after Patty slaps Paige across the face, Paige begins pounding Patty with her fists. Patty manages to escape and runs into the garage. She huddles against the garage wall. Paige chases Patty into the garage. Patty says, “Please, please don’t hurt me. I’m sorry I slapped you.” Paige kicks Patty in the back. Patty turns around and karate chops Paige in the neck, rendering her unconscious. In many jurisdictions, Patty’s karate chop is lawful under a theory of self-defense because she completely withdrew from the attack. Thus Patty is probably not criminally responsible for battery, based on the karate chop to the neck. However, Patty could be criminally responsible for battery based on the slap to Paige’s face because this physical contact was unprovoked and not defensive under the circumstances.

Figure 5.3 New York Penal Law

The defendant cannot use any degree of force in self-defense unless the defendant is faced with an imminent attack (State v. Taylor, 2010). Imminent means the attack is immediate and not something that will occur in the future. If the defendant is threatened with a future attack, the appropriate response is to inform law enforcement, so that they can incapacitate the threatening individual by arrest or prosecution. Another situation where imminence is lacking is when the attack occurred in the past . When the defendant uses force to remedy a previous attack, this is retaliatory, and a self-defense claim is not appropriate. The legal response is to inform law enforcement so that they can incapacitate the attacker by arrest or prosecution.

Some state courts have expanded the imminence requirement to include situations where a husband in a domestic violence situation uses force or violence regularly against the defendant, a battered wife, therefore creating a threat of imminent harm every day (Bechtel v. State, 2010). If a jurisdiction recognizes the battered wife defense , the defendant—the battered wife—can legally use force against her abusive husband in self-defense in situations where harm is not necessarily immediate.

Example of an Attack That Is Not Imminent

Vinny tells Fiona that if she does not pay him the $1,000 she owes him, he will put out a contract on her life. Fiona pulls out a loaded gun and shoots Vinny. Fiona cannot successfully argue self-defense in this case. Vinny’s threat was a threat of future harm, not imminent harm. Thus Fiona had plenty of time to contact law enforcement to help protect her safety.

Example of an Attack That Is Retaliatory

Dwight and Abel get into a fist fight. Dwight knocks Abel unconscious. Dwight observes Abel for a few minutes, and then he picks up a large rock and crushes Abel’s skull with it, killing him. Dwight cannot claim self-defense in this situation. Once Dwight realized that Abel was unconscious, he did not need to continue to defend himself against an imminent attack. Dwight’s conduct appears retaliatory and is not justified under these circumstances.

Example of an Imminent Attack under the Battered Wife Defense

Spike severely beats and injures his wife Veronica every couple of days. Spike’s beatings have become more violent, and Veronica starts to fear for her life. One night, Veronica shoots and kills Spike while he is sleeping. In states that have expanded self-defense to include the battered wife defense, Veronica may be successful on a theory of self-defense.

Mary Winkler Defense Video

Dr. Alan J. Lipman Catherine Crier on Winkler Spousal Abuse Murder Trial

Mary Winkler claimed the battered wife defense as an imperfect defense to the murder of her husband, a pastor (Gay, M., 2011).

Proportionality

The defendant cannot claim self-defense unless the degree of force used is objectively reasonable under the circumstances. This requirement primarily focuses on the use of deadly force and when it is legally justified. In general, deadly force can by employed in self-defense when a reasonable person feels threatened with imminent death , serious bodily injury , and, in some jurisdictions, a serious felony (Or. Rev. Stat. 2010). Serious bodily injury and serious felony are technical terms that are defined in a statute or case, depending on the jurisdiction. The Model Penal Code states that deadly force is not justifiable “unless the actor believes that such force is necessary to protect himself against death, serious bodily harm, kidnapping or sexual intercourse compelled by force or threat” (Model Penal Code § 3.04(2)(b)).

Example of Appropriate Deadly Force

Nicholas, an intruder, pins Wanda to the floor of her garage and begins to forcibly remove her clothing. Wanda feels around the floor with her hand and finds a screwdriver. She plunges the screwdriver into Nicholas’s neck, killing him. Wanda has used appropriate force and can claim self-defense in most jurisdictions. A reasonable person in Wanda’s situation would feel deadly force is necessary to repel Nicholas’s sexual assault. Nicholas’s attack is a serious felony that could result in serious bodily injury or death . Thus the use of deadly force is legally justified under these circumstances.

Duty to Retreat

Early common law stated that the defendant had a duty to retreat to the wall before using deadly force against an attacker. The majority of states have rejected this doctrine and instead allow the defendant to stand his or her ground if the defendant is not the initial aggressor in the confrontation (State v. Sandoval, 2010). In jurisdictions that still follow the retreat doctrine , the defendant must retreat if there is an objectively reasonable belief that the attacker will cause death or serious bodily injury, and a retreat won’t unreasonably increase the likelihood of death or serious bodily injury (Connecticut Criminal Jury Instructions, 2010). The Model Penal Code defines the duty to retreat by stating that the use of deadly force is not justifiable if “the actor knows that he can avoid the necessity of using such force with complete safety by retreating” (Model Penal Code § 3.04 (2) (b) (ii)). An established exception to the retreat doctrine in jurisdictions that follow it is the defense of the home, which is called the castle doctrine . The castle doctrine is discussed shortly.

Example of the Duty to Retreat

Sandy and Sue have an argument in the park. Sue pulls a knife out of a sheath that is strapped to her leg and begins to advance toward Sandy. Sandy also has a knife in her pocket. In a state that follows the retreat doctrine , Sandy must attempt to escape, if she can do so safely. In a state that follows the stand-your-ground doctrine , Sandy can defend herself using her own knife and claim lawful self-defense. Note that Sandy was not the initial aggressor in this situation. If Sandy pulled a knife first, she could not use the knife and claim self-defense, whether the state follows the stand-your-ground doctrine or the duty to retreat doctrine.

Objectively Reasonable Fear of Injury or Death

The defendant cannot claim self-defense unless a reasonable person in the defendant’s situation would believe that self-defense is necessary to avoid injury or death. If the defendant honestly but unreasonably believes self-defense is necessary under the circumstances, a claim of imperfect self-defense may reduce the severity of the offense (State v. Faulkner, 2010). However, the defendant is still guilty of a crime, albeit a less serious crime.

Example of Unjustified Conduct

Justin, who weighs over two hundred pounds and is six feet tall, accidentally bumps into Wanda, a slender ten-year-old child. Wanda spins around and shakes her fist at Justin. Justin responds by shoving Wanda so hard that she crashes into a telephone pole and is killed. Justin probably cannot claim self-defense under these circumstances. A reasonable person would not believe Wanda is about to seriously injure or kill Justin. Thus Justin’s response is unnecessary and unjustified in this case.

Example of Imperfect Self-Defense

Change the unjustified conduct example given in Section 5 “Example of Unjustified Conduct” . Imagine that a slender, female ten-year-old severely abused Justin when he was younger. Since the abusive incident, Justin has an unreasonable fear of female children and honestly believes that they can and will hurt him if provoked. If the trier of fact determines that Justin honestly but unreasonably believed that Wanda was about to inflict serious bodily injury or kill him, any charge of murder could be reduced to manslaughter on a theory of imperfect self-defense .

Key Takeaways

• Self-defense is a defense based on justification that allows a defendant to use physical force to protect himself or herself from injury or death.
• Deadly force is any force that can produce death. An individual does not have to die for the force to be deemed deadly.
• Four elements are required for self-defense: (1) an unprovoked attack, (2) which threatens imminent injury or death, and (3) an objectively reasonable degree of force, used in response to (4) an objectively reasonable fear of injury or death.
• Two exceptions to the unprovoked attack rule are an individual’s use of excessive force in response to an initial attack and the defendant’s withdrawal from the initial attack.
• The battered wife defense asserts that a woman who is a victim of spousal abuse may use force in self-defense under certain circumstances, even when the threat of harm is not immediate. The battered wife defense is justified with respect to the imminence requirement: because the abuse is so constant, the battered wife faces an imminent threat every day.
• Deadly force is appropriate in self-defense when the attacker threatens death, serious bodily injury, and, in some jurisdictions, a serious felony.
• The duty to retreat doctrine is a common-law rule requiring a defendant to retreat if it is safe to do so, instead of using deadly force in self-defense. The stand-your-ground doctrine is a rule allowing the defendant to use deadly force if appropriate in self-defense, rather than retreating.
• Imperfect self-defense is a defense available when the defendant has an honest but unreasonable belief that force is necessary to defend against injury or death. Imperfect self-defense reduces the severity of the offense, but does not result in acquittal.

Answer the following questions. Check your answers using the answer key at the end of the chapter.

• Scott’s wife Diane constantly physically abuses him. One night while Diane is sleeping, Scott places a pillow over her face and smothers her. Can Scott defend against a charge of criminal homicide by claiming self-defense ? Why or why not?
• Read Rodriguez v. State , 212 S.W.3d 819 (2006). In Rodriguez , the defendant was convicted of murder and attempted murder. The defendant appealed his convictions on the ground that the jury did not unanimously reject each element of self-defense. Did the Court of Appeals of Texas uphold the defendant’s convictions? The case is available at this link: https://casetext.com/case/rodriguez-v-state-464 .
• Read Shuler v. Babbitt , 49 F.Supp.2d 1165 (1998). In Shuler , the defendant shot and killed a grizzly bear that charged him while he checked a sheep pasture to make sure his sheep were safe. The sheep had already been subjected to several bear attacks. The Fish and Wildlife Service thereafter fined the defendant under the Endangered Species Act. The defendant claimed self-defense against the bear. The Fish and Wildlife Service ruled that the defendant provoked the attack and could not claim self-defense. Did the US District Court for the District of Montana uphold the fine? The case is available at this link: http://www.gilalivestockgrowers.org/documents/ShulerVsBabbitt.pdf .

Law and Ethics: The Menendez Brothers

Were They Entitled to a Jury Instruction on Imperfect Self-Defense?

Read Menendez v. Terhune , 422 F.3d 1012 (2005). The case is available at this link: http://cases.justia.com/us-court-of-appeals/F3/422/1012/569492 .

Lyle and Eric Menendez were tried and convicted of murder and conspiracy to commit murder of their parents. There were two series of trials. The first trial, which had two separate juries, resulted in two hung juries. At the first trial, the brothers introduced evidence of sexual abuse by their father, and the court instructed the jury on imperfect self-defense . The imperfect self-defense jury instruction was based on the brothers’ honest but unreasonable fear that their father would hurt or kill them (Menendez v. Terhune, 2010). The second trial took place in front of one jury and resulted in the convictions. During the second trial, some evidence of abuse was excluded, Lyle Menendez refused to testify, and there was no jury instruction on imperfect self-defense . After sentencing, the brothers petitioned for a writ of habeas corpus based on several claims, including the exclusion of the abuse evidence and failure to instruct the jury on imperfect self-defense (Menendez v. Terhune, 2010). The US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit affirmed the district court’s denial of the petition on grounds that there was insufficient evidence to support the jury instruction on imperfect self-defense and no foundation to support the admissibility of the evidence of abuse. The court held that the evidence confirmed there was no imminent threat of serious bodily injury or death when the brothers killed their parents.

The facts of the case are lurid. Evidence included the sexual abuse of both boys by their father, surreptitiously taped psychotherapy sessions, spending sprees, fabricated mafia hit stories, and alleged will tampering by the brothers after the parents were killed.

• Do you think the Menendez case should have been treated as a “battered child syndrome” case, easing the requirement of imminence and allowing for a jury instruction on imperfect self-defense ?

Check your answer using the answer key at the end of the chapter.

Menendez Brothers Video

Lyle and Erik Menendez News Report

A news story on the conviction of the Menendez brothers is presented in this video:

Bechtel v. State , 840 P.2d 1 (1992), accessed November 13, 2010, http://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=14171263417876785206&hl=en&as_sdt=2&as_vis=1&oi=scholarr .

Connecticut Criminal Jury Instructions, No. 2.8-3, accessed November 13, 2010, http://www.jud.ct.gov/ji/criminal/part2/2.8-3.htm .

Gay, M., “Abused Wife Who Killed Preacher Husband Speaks Out,” Huffingtonpost.com website, accessed August 25, 2011, http://www.aolnews.com/2010/11/05/abused-wife-who-killed-preacher-husband-speaks-out .

Menendez v. Terhune , 422 F.3d 1012, 1024 (2005), accessed November 19, 2010, http://cases.justia.com/us-court-of-appeals/F3/422/1012/569492 .

Mich. Comp. Laws § 780.972, accessed November 13, 2010, http://www.legislature.mi.gov/(S(3li5rs55kkzn2pfegtskdunn))/mileg.aspx?page=getObject&objectName=mcl-780-972&highlight=self-defense .

N.Y. Penal Law § 35.15(1)(b), accessed November 13, 2010, http://law.onecle.com/new-york/penal/PEN035.15_35.15.html .

Or. Rev. Stat. § 161.219, accessed November 13, 2010, http://www.leg.state.or.us/ors/161.html .

State v. Belgard , 410 So.2d 720 (1982), accessed November 13, 2010, http://www.leagle.com/xmlResult.aspx?xmldoc=19821130410So2d720_1997.xml&docbase=CSLWAR1-1950-1985 .

State v. Faulkner , 483 A.2d 759 (1984), accessed November 13, 2010, http://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=17158253875987176431&hl=en&as_sdt=2&as_vis=1&oi=scholarr .

State v. Sandoval , 130 P.3d 808 (2006), accessed November 13, 2010, http://www.publications.ojd.state.or.us/S53457.htm .

State v. Taylor , 858 P.2d 1358 (1993), accessed November 13, 2010, http://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=1539441759711884447&hl=en&as_sdt=2&as_vis=1&oi=scholarr .

State v. Williams , 644 P.2d 889 (1982), accessed November 13, 2010, http://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=18157916201475630105&hl=en&as_sdt=2&as_vis=1&oi=scholarr .

Criminal Law Copyright © 2015 by University of Minnesota is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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A Political Philosophy of Self-Defense

Self-defense is not merely an individual right; it is collective political resistance.

Chad Kautzer

• February 1, 2018

In his 1964 speech “Communication and Reality,” Malcolm X said: “I am not against using violence in self-defense. I don’t call it violence when it’s self-defense, I call it intelligence.” Earlier that year, he made a similar point in his Harlem speech introducing the newly founded Organization of Afro-American Unity: “It’s hard for anyone intelligent to be nonviolent.”

To portray self-defensive violence as natural, in no need of justification, or as so commonsensical that it could barely be called violence has a depoliticizing effect. Since the goal of Malcolm X’s speeches was to undermine critiques of armed black resistance, this effect was intentional. For good reasons, he was attempting to normalize black people defending themselves against the violence of white rule. When Malcolm X did speak of self-defense as a form of violence, he emphasized that it was lawful and an individual right. In his most famous speech, “The Ballot or the Bullet” (1964), he explicitly stated: “We don’t do anything illegal.” This was also, of course, how the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense justified its armed shadowing of police in Oakland in the late 1960s: it was the members’ Second Amendment right to bear arms and their right under California law to openly carry them.

When conditions are so oppressive that one’s self is not recognized at all, self-defense is de facto insurrection, a necessary  making oneself known  through resistance.

To develop a critical theory of community defense, however, we need to move beyond the rhetoric of rights or the idea that all self-defensive violence is quasi-natural or nonpolitical. The self-defense I discuss in this essay is political because the self being defended is political, and as such it requires both normative and strategic considerations. This project seeks to articulate the dynamics of power at work in self-defense and the constitution of the self through its social relations and conflicts.

Because communities of color defend themselves as much against a culture of white supremacy as they do against bodily harm, their self-defense undermines existing social hierarchies, ideologies, and identities. If we were to limit ourselves to the language of individual rights, these interconnections would remain concealed. Violence against women (but not only women), for example, has a gendering function, enforcing norms of feminine subordination and vulnerability. Resistance to such violence not only defends the body but also undermines gender and sexual norms, subverting hetero-masculine dominance and the notions of femininity or queerness it perpetuates. Since the social structures and identities of race, gender, class, and ability intersect in our lives, practices of self-defense can and often must challenge structures of oppression on multiple fronts simultaneously.

In the following, I do not focus on the question of whether self-defensive violence is justifiable, but rather on why it is political; how it can transform self-understandings and community relations; in what contexts it can be insurrectionary; and why it must be understood against a background of structural violence. It is necessary to clarify these dimensions of self-defense for two reasons in particular. First, arguments advocating armed community defense too often discuss the use of violence and the preparations for it as somehow external to political subjectivity, as if taking up arms, training, or exercising self-defensive violence do not transform subjects and their social relations. The influence of Frantz Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth (1961) on the early Black Panthers, Steve Biko, and others derives precisely from Fanon’s understanding of the transformative effects of resistance in the decolonizing of consciousness. “At the individual level,” Fanon writes, “violence is a cleansing force. It rids the colonized of their inferiority complex, of their passive and despairing attitude.”

The second reason for clarification is to distinguish the strategies, ways of theorizing, and forms of social relations of liberatory movements from those of reactionary movements. There is an increasingly influential understanding of self-defense today that reinforces a particular notion of the self—a “sovereign subject”—that is corrosive to horizontal social relations and can only be sustained vis-à-vis state power. This notion of the self runs counter to the goals of non-statist movements and self-reliant communities. To be aware of these possibilities and pitfalls allows us to avoid them, a goal to which the following sketch of a critical theory of community self-defense seeks to contribute.

Resistance and Structural Violence

At the National Negro Convention in 1843, Reverend Henry Highland Garnet issued a rare public call for large-scale resistance to slavery: “Let your motto be resistance! resistance! resistance! No oppressed people have ever secured their liberty without resistance. What kind of resistance you had better make, you must decide by the circumstances that surround you, and according to the suggestion of expediency.” I describe resistance as opposition to the existing social order from within, and, as Garnet suggested, it can take different forms, such as self-defense, insurrection, or revolution. We can think of an insurrection as a limited armed revolt or rebellion against an authority, such as a state government, occupying power, or even slave owner. It is a form of illegal resistance, often with localized objectives, as in Shays’ Rebellion (1786), Nat Turner’s Rebellion (1831), the insurrections on the Amistad (1839) and Creole (1841), the coal miner Battle of Blair Mountain (1921), Watts (1965), Stonewall (1969), and Attica (1971).

Distinguishing between defensive and insurrectionary violence can be complicated. In the Amistad case, for example, white officials initially described it as a rebellion and thus a violation of the law, but later reclassified it as self-defense when the original enslavement was found to be unlawful. In a rare reversal, the U.S. Supreme Court recognized the captives on the Amistad as having selves worthy of defense. That was never in question among those rebelling, of course, but it does indicate the political nature of the self and our assessments of resistance. “Since the Other was reluctant to recognize me,” writes Fanon, “there was only one answer: to make myself known.” On the Amistad , rebellion was the only way for the enslaved to make their selves known, meaning that their actions were simultaneously a defense of their lives and a political claim to recognition.

To develop a critical theory of community defense, we need to move beyond the rhetoric of rights.

A sustained insurrection can become revolutionary when it threatens to fundamentally transform or destroy the dominant political, social, or economic institutions, as with the rise of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation in Mexico in 1994 and the recent wave of Arab uprisings in the Middle East and North Africa, including most significantly Rojava or Syrian Kurdistan. The armed rebellion led by John Brown in 1859, which seized the United States arsenal at Harpers Ferry, was intended to instigate a revolution against the institution of slavery. Although the insurrection was quickly put down, it inspired abolitionists around the country and contributed to the onset of the U.S. Civil War.

Brown’s rebellion was not a slave revolt (and thus not an act of self-defense), but it did highlight the nature of structural violence. Henry David Thoreau, the inspiration for Gandhi’s nonviolent civil disobedience and, in turn, that of Martin Luther King, Jr., wrote the most insightful analysis of this violence at the time. In his essay “A Plea for Captain John Brown,” Thoreau defends Brown’s armed resistance and identifies the daily state violence of white rule against which the insurrection took place:

We preserve the so-called peace of our community by deeds of petty violence every day. Look at the policeman’s billy and handcuffs! Look at the jail! Look at the gallows! Look at the chaplain of the regiment! We are hoping only to live safely on the outskirts of this provisional army. So we defend ourselves and our hen-roosts, and maintain slavery. . . . I think that for once the Sharps rifles and the revolvers were employed in a righteous cause [i.e., Brown’s insurrection].

In this passage Thoreau highlights how the so-called security of one community was achieved by oppressing another and making it insecure. To properly understand the insurrection, he therefore argues, one must view it as a response to illegitimate structural violence. He enumerates the commonplace mechanisms of this rule, which, for whites, fades into the background of their everyday lives: law and order upheld by a neutral police force, enforced by an objective legal system and carceral institutions, and defended by an army supported by the Constitution and blessed by religious authorities. The violence of white supremacy becomes naturalized and its beneficiaries see no need for its justification; it is nearly invisible to them, though not, of course, to those it oppresses. “The existence of violence is at the very heart of a racist system,” writes Robert Williams in Negroes with Guns (1962). “The Afro-American militant is a ‘militant’ because he defends himself, his family, his home and his dignity. He does not introduce violence into a racist social system—the violence is already there and has always been there. It is precisely this unchallenged violence that allows a racist social system to perpetuate itself.”

We all exist within hierarchical social structures and the meaning and function of violence, self-defensive or otherwise, will be determined by our position vis-à-vis others in these structures. FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, for example, described the self-defensive practices of the Black Panther Party as “the greatest threat to the internal security of the country” and thus insurrectionary, if not revolutionary. Surely his assessment had more to do with the threat self-reliant black communities posed to white domination in the country than with the security of government institutions. “When people say that they are opposed to Negroes ‘resorting to violence,’” writes Williams, “what they really mean is that they are opposed to Negroes defending themselves and challenging the exclusive monopoly of violence practiced by white racists.” These structures of domination and monopolies of violence are forms of rule that operate in the family, the city, and the colony, and resistance to their violence, both dramatic and mundane, “makes known” the selves of the subjugated.

‘The Afro-American militant . . . does not introduce violence into a racist social system—the violence . . . has always been there. It is precisely this unchallenged violence that allows a racist social system to perpetuate itself.’

A satisfactory notion of self-defense is not obvious when we view self-defensive acts within the context of structural violence and understand the self as both embodied and social. Writing specifically of armed self-defense, Akinyele Omowale Umoja defines it as “the protection of life, persons, and property from aggressive assault through the application of force necessary to thwart or neutralize attack.” While this is appropriate in many contexts, the primary association of self-defense with protection does not capture how it can also reproduce or undermine existing social norms and relations, depending on the social location of the self being defended. Describing the effects of his defense against a slaveholder, Frederick Douglass, for example, wrote that he “was a changed being after that fight,” for “repelling the unjust and cruel aggressions of a tyrant” had an emancipatory effect “on my spirit.” This act of self-defense, he asserts, “was the end of the brutification to which slavery had subjected me.” Our understanding of self-defense must, therefore, account for the transformative power of self-defense for oppressed groups as well as the stabilizing effect of self-defense for oppressor groups.

Social Hierarchies and Subject Formation

To see how self-defense can have several effects and why a critical theory of self-defense must, therefore, always account for relations of domination, we need to understand in what way the self is both embodied and social . By embodied I mean that it is through the body that we experience and come to know the world and ourselves, rather than through an abstract or disembodied mind. The body orients our perspective, and is socially visible, vulnerable, and limited. Much of our knowledge about the social and physical world is exercised by the body. Our bodies are sexed, raced, and gendered, not only “externally” by how others view us or how institutions order us—as, for example, feminine, masculine, queer, disabled, white, and black—but also “internally” by how we self-identify and perform these social identities in our conscious behavior and bodily habits. By the time we are able to challenge our identities, we have already been habituated within social hierarchies, so resistance involves unlearning our habits in thought and practice as well as transforming social institutions. As David Graeber writes, “forms of social domination come to be experienced in the most intimate possible ways—in physical habits, instincts of desire or revulsion—that often seem essential to our very sense of being in the world.”

Self-defensive violence can transform self-understandings and community relations; it can be insurrectionary; and it must be understood against a background of structural violence.

Since our location within social hierarchies in part determines our social identities, the self that develops is social and political from the start. This does not mean that we are “stuck” or doomed to a certain social identity or location, nor that we can simply decide to identify ourselves elsewhere within social hierarchies or somehow just exit them. To be sure, we have great leeway in terms of self-identification, but self-identification does not itself change institutional relations or degrees of agency, respect, risk, opportunity, or access to resources. These kinds of changes can only be achieved through social and political struggles. Our embodied identities are sites of conflict, formed and reformed through our practical routines and relations as well as through social struggle. Since the actions and perceptions of others are integral to the development of our own, including our self-understanding, we say that the self is mediated , or is formed through our relations with others in systems of production, consumption, education, law, and so forth.

In The Souls of Black Folk  (1903), W. E. B. Du Bois theorized black life in a white supremacist society as experiencing one’s self as split in two, a kind of internalization of a social division that produced what he called “double-consciousness,” or “this sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others, of measuring one’s soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity.” Although one may view oneself as capable, beautiful, intelligent, and worthy of respect, the social institutions one inhabits can express the opposite view. Part of the experience of oppression is to live this othering form of categorization in everyday social life. Even when one consciously strives to resist denigration and to hold fast to a positive self-relation, the social hierarchy insinuates itself into one’s self-understanding. In the most intimate moments of introspection, a unified self-consciousness escapes us because our self-understanding can never completely break from the social relations and ideologies that engender it. Social conflict is internalized, and it takes great strength just to hold oneself together; to live as a subject when others view and treat you as little more than an object , and when you are denied the freedoms, security, and resources enjoyed by others. Ultimately, only by undermining the social conditions of oppression through collective resistance can the double-consciousness Du Bois describes become one.

Racism produces race and not the other way around. Racial categories emerge from practical relations of domination, unlike ethnic groups, which are cultural forms of collective life that do not need to define themselves in opposition to others. Racial categories are neither abstract nor biological, but are social constructions initially imposed from without but soon after reconfigured from within through social struggles. As with all relations of domination, the original shared meanings attributed to one group are contrary to the shared meanings attributed to other groups and, thus, often exist as general dichotomies. This oppositional relation in meaning mirrors the hierarchical opposition of the groups in practical life—a fact that is neither natural nor contingent.

Masculinity and femininity, for example, are not natural categories: they are social roles within a social order and thus have a history just as racial groups do. Yet, like those of race, the social and symbolic relations of gender are not contingent. Indeed, masculinity and femininity exhibit a certain kind of logic that we find in every institutionalized form of social domination. Because gender is a way of hierarchically ordering human relations, the characteristics associated with the dominant group function to justify their domination. Group members are said to be, for example, stronger, more intelligent, and more moral and rational. Nearly every aspect of social life will reflect this, from the division of labor to the forms of entertainment.

In reality, the dominant group does not dominate because it is more virtuous or rational—indeed, the depth of its viciousness is limitless—but due to its dominance it can propagate the idea that it is more virtuous, rational, or civilized. “The colonial ‘civilizing mission,’” writes María Lugones, “was the euphemistic mask of brutal access to people’s bodies through unimaginable exploitation, violent sexual violation, control of reproduction, and systematic terror.”

The fundamental dependency of the oppressor on the oppressed is concealed in all ideologies of social domination. Although the very existence of the colonist, capitalist, white supremacist, and patriarch relies on the continuous exploitation of others, they propagate the idea of an inverted world in which they are free from all dependencies. This is the camera obscura of ideology that Karl Marx discusses in The German Ideology (1845–46). The supposedly natural lack of autonomy of the subordinated groups is, we are told, the reason for social hierarchy. Workers depend on capitalists to employ and pay them, women need men to support and protect them, people of color require whites to control and decide for them, and so forth.

Resistance to domination reveals the deception of this inverted world, destabilizing the practical operations of hierarchy and undermining its myths, for example of masculine sovereignty, white superiority, compulsory heterosexuality, and capital’s self-creation of value. Violence and various forms of coercion support these myths, but such violence would be ineffective if some groups were not socially, politically, and legally structured to be vulnerable to it.

While self-defensive practices can’t eliminate vulnerability, they can undermine it as a structuring principle of oppression.

Ruth Wilson Gilmore defines racism as “the state-sanctioned or extralegal production and exploitation of group-differentiated vulnerability to premature death.” Indeed, to be vulnerable to violence, exploitation, discrimination, and toxic environments is never the choice of the individual. Any radical liberatory agenda must therefore include among its aims the reduction of such group-differentiated vulnerabilities, which would strike a blow to many forms of social domination, including by not limited to race. This is not to say that vulnerability can be completely overcome. The social nature of our selves guarantees that the conditions that enable or disable us can never be completely under our control, and those very same conditions render us vulnerable to both symbolic and physical harm.

Turning specifically to consider self-defensive practices, while they cannot therefore eliminate vulnerability, they can reduce it for particular groups and undermine it at a structuring principle of oppression. Training in self-defense, writes Martha McCaughey in Real Knockouts (1997), “makes possible the identification of not only some of the mechanisms that create and sustain gender inequality but also a means to subvert them.”

The Politics of Self-Defense

If we accept a social, historical, and materialist account of group and subject formation, and understand that groups are reproduced with the help of violence, both mundane and spectacular, then we can see why self-defense functions as more than protection from bodily harm. It will also be clear why self-defense is not external to questions of our political subjectivity. If we acknowledge that we are hierarchically organized in groups—by race, gender, and class, for example—which makes some groups the beneficiaries of structural violence and others disabled, harmed, or killed by it, we see how self-defense can either stabilize or undermine domination and exploitation.

Self-defense as resistance from below is a fundamental violation of the most prevalent social and political norms, as well as our bodily habits. As McCaughey writes: “The feminine demeanor that comes so ‘naturally’ to women, a collection of specific habits that otherwise may not seem problematic, is precisely what makes us terrible fighters. Suddenly we see how these habits that make us vulnerable and that aestheticize that vulnerability are encouraged in us by a sexist culture.” Organized examples of resistance to this structured vulnerability include the Gulabi or Pink Sari Gang in Uttar Pradesh, India; Edith Garrud’s Bodyguard suffragettes, who trained in jujitsu; as well as numerous queer and feminist street patrol groups, including the Pink Panthers. McCaughey calls these self-defensive practices “feminism in the flesh,” because they are simultaneously resisting the violence of patriarchy, while reconfiguring and empowering one’s body and self-understanding. We could similarly think of the self-defensive practices of the Black Panthers, Young Lords, Deacons for Defense and Justice, Brown Berets, and the American Indian Movement as anti-racist , as decolonization in the flesh .

Organized examples of self-defensive resistance include the Gulabi or Pink Sari Gang in India, Edith Garrud’s Bodyguard suffragettes, the Pink Panthers, the Black Panthers, Young Lords, Deacons for Defense and Justice, Brown Berets, and the American Indian Movement.

Although self-defense is not sufficient to transform institutionalized relations of domination, unequal distributions of resources and risk, or the experience of double-consciousness, it is a form of decolonization and necessary for other kinds of mobilizations. The praxis of resistance is also an important form of self-education about the nature of power, the operations of oppression, and the practice of autonomy. When conditions are so oppressive that one’s self is not recognized at all, self-defense is de facto insurrection, a necessary making oneself known through resistance. While the most common form of self-defense is individual and uncoordinated, this does not make it any less political or any less important to the struggle, and this is true regardless of the mind-set or intentions of those exercising resistance.

We must, however, also be attentive to how resistance, and even preparations for it, can instrumentalize and reinforce problematic gender and race norms, political strategies, or sovereign politics. A critical theory of community self-defense should reveal these potentially problematic effects and identify how to counter them. There is, for example, an influential pamphlet, The Catechism of the Revolutionist (1869), written by Sergey Nechayev and republished by the Black Panthers, which describes the revolutionist as having “no personal interests, no business affairs, no emotions, no attachments, no property, and no name.” This nameless, yet masculine, figure “has broken all the bonds which tie him to the civil order.” But who provides for the revolutionist and who labors to reproduce the material conditions of his revolutionary life? Upon whom, in short, does the supposed independence of the revolutionist depend?

Although the machismo and narcissism here is extreme to the point of being mythical—George Jackson said it was “too cold, very much like the fascist psychology”—it does speak to a twofold danger in practices of resistance. The first danger is that self-defensive practices are part of a division of labor that falls along the traditional fault lines of social hierarchies within groups. Men have, for instance, too often taken up the task of community defense in all contexts of resistance, which has the effect of reproducing traditional gender hierarchies and myths of masculine sovereignty. Considerations of self-defense must therefore be intersectionalist and aware of the transformative power and embodied nature of resistance, as discussed above. The group INCITE!, for example, seeks to defend women, gender nonconforming, and trans people of color from “violence directed against communities (i.e., police brutality, prisons, racism, economic exploitation, etc.)” as well as from “violence within communities (sexual/domestic violence).”

The second danger is a commitment to the notion of a sovereign subject, which is the centerpiece of authoritarian political ideologies and motivates so many reactionary movements. The growing number of white militias, the sovereign citizen movement, as well as major shifts in interpretations of the Second Amendment and natural rights, are contributing to an increasingly influential politics of self-defense with a sovereign subject at its core. For this sovereign subject—whose freedom can only be actualized through domination—the absolute identification with abstract individual rights always reflects an implicit dependency on state violence, much the way Nechayev’s revolutionist implicitly relies on a community he refuses to acknowledge. The sovereign subject’s disavowal of the social conditions of its own possibility produces an authoritarian concept of the self, whose so-called independence always has the effect of undermining the conditions of freedom for others.

Although one objective of self-defense is protection from bodily harm, the social and political nature of the self being defended makes such resistance political as well. Self-defense can help dismantle oppressive identities, lessen group vulnerability, and destabilize social hierarchies supported by structural violence. The notion of a sovereign subject conceals these empowering dimensions of self-defense and inhibits the creation of self-reliant communities in which the autonomy of each is enabled by nonhierarchical (and non-sovereign) social relations being afforded to all.

This essay is adapted from Setting Sights: Histories and Reflections on Community Armed Self-Defense.

Chad Kautzer is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Lehigh University and the author of  Radical Philosophy: An Introduction .

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The loaded history of self-defense.

Harvard Staff Writer

Harvard scholar talks research, inspiration behind book tracing path to stand-your-ground laws

After the killing of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin in 2012, Harvard historian Caroline Light felt compelled to explore the roots of the American right to self-defense, which has helped turned the United States into a country with more guns than people.

In her new book, “Stand Your Ground: A History of America’s Love Affair with Lethal Self-Defense,” Light traces the development of the notion of self-defense from English common law to contemporary stand-your-ground laws.

The Gazette sat down with Light to talk about her book, the rise of armed citizenship, and the idea that the right to self-defense has traditionally been wielded by the most privileged against the most vulnerable.

GAZETTE: In your book, you trace the history of the American right to self-defense to before the foundation of the United States. Where does this notion come from?

LIGHT: I traced the legal theory and ideology of lethal self-defense back to English common law principles, which are foundational to what would eventually become the United States legal system. But self-defense had serious limitations in the English context. People in the United States forget that originally English common law doctrine held a “duty to retreat” that meant that you were obligated to retreat in the face of an attack. The one exception was enunciated in a 1604 court case involving an intrusion of agents of the king into a man’s private dwelling. These are the origins of the Castle Doctrine, which says that you do not have the duty to retreat when you’re in your home because “a man’s home is his castle.” This doctrine originated as an exemption to the duty to retreat, but in the United States it turned into a very expansive set of notions about who is allowed to fight back lethally against whom. The ideology of lethal self-defense is very selective in the U.S., even if we claim to be gender-blind and race-blind. When people in the U.S. said, “A man’s home is his castle,” what they actually meant was, “A white, property-owning man’s home is his castle,” and he’s allowed to fight back.

GAZETTE: How did the notion of self-defense that emerged in the 17th century as a privilege for white men who owned property, as you argue, evolve over the centuries?

LIGHT: When we look back into the roots of self-defense laws in the United States, we also see that they’re tethered to colonialism, legalized slavery, and the legal doctrine of coverture, which meant that married women couldn’t own any property because their rights were literally “covered” by their husbands. All of these different principles of exclusion were embedded in what would become the United States’ legal system. And as I traced them through time, even as laws started becoming more inclusive, self-defense laws were adjudicated chiefly to protect white men and their property. That took off in the post-Reconstruction era, late in the 19th century, when we see court cases in several states where white men are allowed to fight back lethally even when they aren’t in their home. We don’t see anything like that happening for African-Americans because in the wake of the Civil War, black codes and vagrancy laws, etc., restricted black freedom and access to full citizenship. And most black codes prohibited African-Americans from possessing weapons for self-defense. Similarly, women couldn’t defend themselves against violence from their husbands. I argue that lethal self-defense has been legalized for the most privileged even if, rhetorically, we celebrate self-defense as something universal to all citizens.

GAZETTE: What is the turning point at which the “duty to retreat” from threat becomes what you call a “selective right to kill”?

LIGHT: The pivotal moment coincides with the end of Reconstruction in the 1870s. There are two crucial court cases, one in Ohio and one in Indiana, in which the state courts decide not to obligate white men to retreat in the face of danger even if they’re outside their homes. This coincided with the moment the federal government withdrew federal forces from the South, which meant it withdrew protections for newly freed people. This was done in the interest of protecting white property, especially given the end of slavery. This legal shift accompanied an effort by whites to retain a claim to what had been their property, to maintain control over formerly enslaved people. The 13th Amendment carried a loophole by which white Southerners could continue enslaving African-Americans under the guise of incarceration for criminal behavior. For instance, vagrancy laws could be used to keep African-Americans in prison. All of these things are part of a larger constellation in which self-defense laws were mobilized selectively in the interest of white property.

GAZETTE: How would you describe the legacy of this belief system in today’s American society?

LIGHT: Lethal self-defense, in many ways, has become naturalized as a universal civil right. What that means is that many Americans see it as their right to carry a lethal weapon in the interest of self-defense. I tracked the transition from the late 20th-century focus on hunting to what we see today, which is an urgent accumulation of firearms for self-defense. On top of that, stand-your-ground laws have spread to over half the states, declaring that you can “stand your ground” against an attack wherever you may be, even outside your home. But as we’ve seen with cases like Trayvon Martin’s, these laws are not adjudicated in a way that entitles everybody to protect themselves from what they perceive to be a reasonable threat.

GAZETTE: You said that the killing of Trayvon Martin inspired you to write this book. How so?

LIGHT: That moment was crucial for many Americans. Trayvon’s death and his killer’s ability to walk free were an awakening to the prevalence of racial violence in our supposedly color-blind society. And even though many people would say that the Trayvon Martin case had nothing to do with stand-your-ground laws, it still resonates in terms of how the jury was instructed to consider George Zimmerman’s guilt or innocence. Stand-your-ground laws provide an exemption from criminal prosecution for people who use lethal self-defense in response to a reasonable threat, and that’s what the jury acted on. They believed that it was reasonable for Zimmerman to fear for his life when he saw an unarmed black teenager. I think that speaks volumes to the pernicious injustice of stand-your-ground laws.

GAZETTE: In your book, you call stand-your-ground laws part of the “Do-It-Yourself Security Citizenship” movement. Could you tell us what this means?

LIGHT: “Do-It-Yourself Security Citizenship” is the idea that an individual can and will be heroically prepared to fight in defense of himself and other innocent lives around him. It’s a seductive narrative for many people. And gun ownership, this notion that you must be prepared to kill or be killed, is at the center of “Do-It-Yourself Security Citizenship.” Whether you have a gun or not, the core idea is that no one is going to protect you, the government won’t protect you, and law enforcement won’t protect you. So as a good citizen, you need to take your safety and security into your own hands. The National Rifle Association [NRA] plays a powerful role in distributing and naturalizing this knowledge, making it seem like an emblem of patriotism to accumulate and carry weapons. Gun ownership is no longer about hunting or recreation; it’s about an urgent necessity to protect yourself from danger and to participate in armed citizenship, which the NRA characterizes as the ideal of American patriotism. Their message is that when you protect yourself, you make everybody safer. I’m not saying that it’s wrong to protect yourself, but I’m asking people to be more self-critical about the way in which “Do-It-Yourself Security Citizenship” is based on anxiety and fear about criminal strangers, including the perception of black masculinity as a threat in and of itself.

GAZETTE: Would you say that the notion of the right to self-defense is part of the DNA of the country? If so, how do you think it will evolve?

LIGHT : Yes, in a way, it’s in our DNA, but we have our own particular genetic mutations. As the duty to retreat and the Castle Doctrine were transported to what would become the United States, they changed due to the influence of our specific economy, our ideal of Manifest Destiny, the legacy of slavery, and also our willful amnesia around the ways in which the violence of slavery has not been left in the past at all. It is in many ways built into our DNA, but does that mean we can’t change it? I remain hopeful that we may become more critical about armed citizenship and its impact on public safety. It’s going to take all of us to rethink and question DIY Security Citizenship as the emblem of patriotism.

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Self-Defense, Necessity, and Punishment: A Philosophical Analysis

Uwe Steinhoff, Self-Defense, Necessity, and Punishment: A Philosophical Analysis , Routledge, 2020, 369pp., $160.00 (hbk), ISBN 9780367407216.

Reviewed by Kimberly Kessler Ferzan, University of Pennsylvania

Uwe Steinhoff is an excellent philosopher. He is analytically exacting, wide ranging, and steeped in many of the central debates. He is also an important critic of the dominant strains of discussion within just war theory. Unfortunately, the book does not live up to Steinhoff's promise as a theorist. Although there are some insightful interventions in current debates, the monograph fails to present a clear and coherent vision. Ultimately, it is best read for some of its pieces, as the whole is less than the sum of its parts.

To begin with, the book is simply an unpleasant read. There is an evident frustration with other philosophers: Steinhoff gets no farther than the second paragraph of his preface before attacking "a group of just war theorists who like to call themselves, 'revisionists'" (ix). And so, from the very first page, this is a book that is presented as ire at the work of others rather than a thorough and cohesive view of Steinhoff's.

This has two specific implications for the reader. The first is tone. Some portions of the book are jarring. For instance, Steinhoff responds to an argument by one philosopher with a one-word sentence: "Wrong" (314). To be sure, it is helpful to know what is incoherent, implausible, and a non-sequitur, but at times the degree of vitriol is hard for a reader (even one who reads substantial amounts of exacting philosophy) to bear.

The second implication is the presentation of the material. The trouble arises because Steinhoff's constant injection of others' arguments (and the previous debates he has had with them and what they have said about his view) just leads to one complicated argument after another. It is too dense, and there are too many rabbit holes. There is just the sense that Steinhoff read other people's work, dashed off three pages of why he thought each philosopher was a complete idiot, and then stapled all the pages together and added a few paragraphs here and there to bind the book together. Rarely does Steinhoff straightforwardly present his view. I think the book would be unapproachable for someone not already steeped in the debates.

This is unfortunate because it seems that Steinhoff has novel insights and new connections. And yet I never got the full sense of how Steinhoff's conception of the emergency justification (Chapter Four) relates to self-defense (Chapter Two). Steinhoff's conception of self-defense, which he believes conceptually entails imminence, is backstopped by a more generous emergency justification that allows one to act against non-imminent threats (45). Though this is apparently a distinction that exists within German law, it is not a feature of U.S. law (as Steinhoff knows, 45), and I would have liked to learn exactly how these two interact. But there are so many intricate and distracting arguments that it is difficult to find the thread that explains precisely what is doing the moral work in distinguishing these two defenses, which Steinhoff maintains are conceptually distinct.

Still, the question remains whether those who are well versed in self-defense theory should read the book. Here, my answer is a tentative yes. There are fruitful lines of argument and analysis. For instance, Steinhoff calls attention to the problem with an objective necessity requirement. As a forfeiture theorist, I would put the concern this way: Even if a culpable aggressor threatening deadly force does forfeit rights against deadly force, there is no reason to impose deadly force in return. That is, deadly force by a self-defender is never actually necessary -- the defender could scream just the right thing, duck at just the right moment, shoot her gun so that the bullet's trajectory just grazes the aggressor's hand and causes him to drop the gun, and so forth (174-81). And a reasonable belief requirement does not resolve the problem because the defender does not mistakenly believe her way is the best way. Rather, she recognizes that, given her epistemic limitations, this is the best she can do. Steinhoff sees this problem as further support for the view that moral justifications cannot be fact-relative, as they are then not action guiding (181). To be sure, moral philosophers have seen this debate before in different guises, but Steinhoff's elucidation of just how problematic an objective necessity requirement is, and how current theorists fail to resolve the problem, is one of the best in the literature.

Overall, the coverage and cohesiveness of the book's general topics is quite good. After a brief introduction, Chapter Two takes on the entire cornucopia of self-defense issues -- necessity, proportionality, imminence, and the subjective element. Chapter Three takes on some special cases -- non-responsible threats and justified aggressors. Chapter Four discusses the emergency justification, and Chapter Five discusses the public authority justification. Notably, the book is not about all types of necessity arguments -- criminal law theorists looking for their standard prison escape cases, discussions of civil disobedience, or queries about torture will find that these are lacking -- nor is it about all of punishment (rather it focuses almost exclusively on Kit Wellman's argument about why the state has the exclusive right to punish). Hence, both necessity and punishment are discussed only in service to their relationship to self-defense, forfeiture, and justifications. Though the title is a bit misleading for those who want broad discussions, the result is a far more topically focused monograph than the title might suggest. All the subjects within the book are also well worth discussing and addressing together.

Nevertheless, there are ways in which the focus is both too dense and too thin. Steinhoff spends significant amounts of time on the discussion of whether there should be a success condition for self-defense, and whether justified aggressors may be liable to defensive force. The former debate often centers around whether a rape victim may justifiably break the wrist of her attacker if that action will not stop the attack, and the latter typically asks whether civilians who will be killed as a side-effect of a justified bombing may shoot down the pilot. To be sure, these are important questions, but they also narrow the discussions in the book. In contrast to these frequent engagement with revisionists' arguments, Steinhoff seems to miss other arguments in the literature that contradict his views, including failing to engage the difficult questions of public authority that Heidi Hurd's Moral Combat raises for his view (341), [1] or the intermediate position for justifications suggested by Antony Duff's concept of "warranted behavior" (see 302). [2] Steinhoff also purports to be relying on the widely shared intuitions inherent within the criminal law (ix, 17, 19), but will sometimes jettison laws he disagrees with (33, 36, 126, 213 n.226), and fails to consistently tie his work to the criminal law's construction of the defense in a way that would bind the argument together.

For the remainder of my review, I will address one central claim of Steinhoff's. He does not believe that we wrong individuals if we employ unnecessary defensive force. Instead, the necessity limitation comes from a "precautionary principle" -- namely, you can never be sure you are not harming an innocent aggressor (67). That is, if someone culpably tries to kill you, and you know you can stop him by pinching him, punching him, or even pummeling him, but you instead opt to kill him, you do not wrong him. Instead, your action is unjustified because you may be incorrect about the facts -- it may be that your attacker is actually innocent (drugged, for example) and so would be wronged by unnecessary force. But you do not wrong culpable aggressors by using unnecessary force.

Intuitions may cut both ways on this one. On the one hand, Steinhoff frequently invokes the argument, "Look who's talking," to argue that those who culpably intend to kill others have no legitimate complaint if someone kills them (e.g., 76, 83, 90, 151). On the other hand, Jon Quong begins a discussion of the necessity requirement with the idea that the police officer who uses unnecessary force wrongs the aggressor. [3] Now, Steinhoff may be able to have his cake and eat it too by arguing that there is something special about the role of law enforcement, but we ought to concede that intuitions about whether the aggressor is wronged can be pumped from either side.

I am more interested, however, in what lies beneath "Look who's talking." Steinhoff uses this phrase repeatedly in the book. And with it, he invokes both the concepts of reciprocity and hypocrisy (92, 93, 152). [4] Although Steinhoff runs these together, I take them to be distinct claims. A reciprocity claim, as I take Steinhoff to be defining it, is the idea that rights exist because of a mutual agreement to respect each other's interests. When reciprocity does not exist, the interest is not respected as a right. In contrast, hypocrisy claims are typically standing claims. That is, given that the complainer has committed the very same transgression, he lacks the standing to complain. I worry, though, that Steinhoff's reciprocity claim is too strong, and a claim of hypocrisy is too weak to do the work Steinhoff wants it to do.

Let's consider Steinhoff's reciprocity argument. Steinhoff thinks that a natural implication of a reciprocity account is that if you aim to kill me, then I do not wrong you by shooting you, even if I know that I could just step on your toe. By having tried to kill me, you are no longer entitled to my respecting your interests as rights.

But Steinhoff takes this further. Once there is a loss of reciprocity, it is in rem . If you try to hit me, then not only may I hit you, but so too may Peter, Paul, and Mary (93). Let's be clear: Peter, Paul, Mary, and I may all hit you because you no longer have rights against being hit. Anyone may hit you. [5]

Your forfeiture is limited to proportionate harms (91). What is proportionate? This too is dependent on a similar "Look who's talking" argument, and there, Steinhoff takes reciprocity to be a predisposition (151). So, I may shoot you for stealing my apple, if you would shoot me for stealing yours (150). [6] Indeed, if you go around merely promoting the idea that all apple thieves should be hung, then you too will not be wronged for being hung for stealing an apple (152). Combining Steinhoff's conception of proportionality with his construal of necessity should yield the implication that if you are stealing an apple, and you have lawn signs that advocate, "Maim the apple thieves!" then not only the apple owner, but Peter, Paul, and Mary may maim you.

Such a broad view of reciprocity, however, strikes me as potentially being a double-edged sword. If A is out of the social contract, not only with B, but also with C, D, and E, so that now C, D, and E are not bound against harming A proportionately to his initial transgression, then should we worry that A is also out of the contract ? And if this is true, then won't A be free to hurt C, D, and E because he is no longer bound to respect their rights? That is, if what protects us is an idea of reciprocity, and reciprocity breaks down, then we must worry that A can no longer wrong anyone. If your actions free you from the reciprocal respect of your interests as rights then it seems that after hitting or trying to hit me, you no longer wrong anyone by hitting them. You are out of the bounds of reciprocity, so just as you cannot be wronged, you cannot commit a wrong either.

Now, it strikes me as implausible that there is a complete free-for-all against you in which Peter, Paul, and Mary may all permissibly hit you (and this is implausible not just because I take them to be folk singing pacifists). But it strikes me as even more implausible that after trying to hit me, you would not wrong any other random persons, say Larry, Moe, and Curly, by hitting them because the reciprocity has broken down. Maybe Steinhoff has something more limited in mind, but it is not clear how he plans to ground it and he does not address this potential implication of his view.

Still, there is a truth to "Look who's talking." It does seem that the aggressor lacks standing to complain. But there are ways to lose one's standing to complain without losing the underlying right. [7] This is readily apparent in the law, and Steinhoff takes the law as importantly informing our arguments. For instance, consider provocateurs. [8] Someone who intentionally provokes a deadly attack loses the right to defend herself, but the person who harms the provocateur still commits a criminal offense. So, you can be wronged and yet not have a right to defend yourself. Or, take estoppel. [9] Here, based on particular representations, one can lose the right to sue despite the fact that one was wronged by the underlying action. What we can glean from these legal positions is that we can finely grain forfeitures in such a way that "Look who's talking" can have moral purchase without amounting to a complete loss of rights by the aggressor. Perhaps Steinhoff can ground this loss in hypocrisy. Nevertheless, if hypocrisy can entail that one lacks standing to complain, this does not mean that hypocrisy can easily be extended to the claim that one is not wronged by the underlying action without further argument.

Ultimately, readers may find examining Steinhoff's interventions in various debates to be useful in helping them to scrutinize carefully assumptions that they are making or their standard approaches to problems. But a work that clearly and crisply sets forth Steinhoff's vision of self-defense and related claims will have to await future publication.

[1] Heidi M. Hurd, Moral Combat (Cambridge University Press, 1999).

[2] Antony Duff, "Rethinking Justifications," Tulsa Law Review , 39 (2004): 829-50.

[3] Jonathan Quong, The Morality of Defensive Force (Oxford University Press, 2020), 125.

[4] E.g., 92 (noting that someone employing unnecessary force could say, "So who are you to complain? You are a damn hypocrite").

[5] Steinhoff says that an aggressor regains her rights when she is subjected to proportionate punishment (and it must be punishment and not beating someone up for fun) and the aggressor makes "an honest decision not to beat people up again" (93).

[6] On this point, he relies on David Rodin's notion of "counterfactual reciprocal compliance" (150). David Rodin, "The Reciprocity Theory of Rights," Law and Philosophy 33 (2014): 281-308.

[7] This slicing of a right is something Steinhoff himself does elsewhere in the monograph (59).

[8] Kimberly Kessler Ferzan, "Provocateurs," Criminal Law and Philosophy 7 (2013): 597-622; Model Penal Code § 3.04(2)(b)(i).

[9] Kimberly Kessler Ferzan, "Losing the Right to Assert You've Been Wrong: A Study in Conceptual Chaos?" in Paul B. Miller and John Oberdiek, eds., Civil Wrongs and Justice in Private Law (Oxford University Press, 2020): 111-129.

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4 Basic Self-Defense Moves Absolutely Everyone Should Know

Protect yourself (and feel empowered) with these essential safety tips and maneuvers.

Karen Asp is an award-winning journalist and author specializing in fitness, nutrition, health, animals, and travel. She has over two decades’ worth of experience writing for leading print magazines and digital brands, including Real Simple , Better Homes & Gardens , O , SELF and more. Karen is a certified plant-based nutrition educator, certified vegan lifestyle coach and educator, and ACE-certified personal trainer and fitness instructor. 

Think you could defend yourself if you were ever attacked? Just because you might be able to handle the toughest of workout classes doesn't necessarily mean you know how to protect yourself. But you absolutely should. We asked safety experts for some self-defense tips and beginner-friendly moves that will give you the best chance of escape (and empower you for the times you feel unsafe but aren't in imminent danger).

Prevention Can Be the Best Protection

Self-defense actually starts before needing to react to the worst-case scenario—with self-awareness and preventive strategies. The first step is paying attention to your surroundings, says Teri Jory, PhD , fourth-degree black belt and creator of DFWM (Don't F*** With Me) Self Defense Training. That means only walking and parking in well-lit areas. Keep your keys (with a safety whistle, defense spray, or safety necklace , if you desire) easily accessible as you approach your car or front door.

Lock your car doors immediately upon entering.

While it's easy to think about obvious situations where you might be attacked, there are those that aren't so obvious, namely when you're in your car. Women have a tendency to get into their car and sit while they check messages—a habit that can actually spell trouble. "If a predator is watching you, this is the perfect opportunity for that person to get in the passenger side, [threaten you], and tell you where to go," says Jory. That's why as soon as you get in the car, as a matter of habit, you should immediately lock the doors and leave.

Be mindful of drinks around strangers.

If you're at a party, stick with friends, and if you've left a drink out of sight even for a few seconds, get a new one. "Spiking a drink with a date rape drug can happen quickly," Jory says. When going on a date, tell family or friends where you're going, especially if this is a first date or blind date. If somebody pushes you to do something you don't want to do, know that you have a right to leave. And of course, charge your cell phone and keep it and a charger on you at all times.

How to Make a Scene

The second part of prevention involves sounding the alarm. If somebody's in your face or you're in a situation where you're unsafe or uncomfortable, yell "back off" or simply scream. "You're trying to get other people's attention and let the predator know you're not an easy target," Jory says.

If ever you're in a situation like this, it's time to go into escape mode—you want to do whatever is necessary to get away and survive. And remember: "Know that you can escape even against somebody bigger or stronger than you," Jory says. The first thing you should do is try to scream and escape. If someone gets their hands on you, then try some defensive moves that could open up the opportunity for an escape.

Know the Most Vulnerable Areas (Yours and Theirs)

For starters, the areas most vulnerable to attack are those that affect seeing and breathing—the eyes, nose, mouth, and throat. You're also more vulnerable on the ground versus standing. Although ending up on the ground during an assault is a real possibility, remaining on your feet should be a priority, Arthur says.

Areas of an attacker's body that are most vulnerable include not only the eyes, nose, and throat, but also the groin. "Effective striking to these areas is most likely to slow, stun, or stop an attacker long enough to get away," says Jarrett Arthur, a self-defense expert in New York City and co-owner of Jarrett and Jennie Self-Defense.

Basic Self-Defense Moves

Fortunately, you don't have to have a black belt in karate to learn how to defend yourself. Just practice these self-defense moves at home frequently so you'll feel confident using them if you're confronted.

"Not only does basic self-defense knowledge make you safer and increase your chance of surviving a violent assault, it also contributes to feelings of confidence and personal power," Arthur says.

Ready Stance

When to use it: Use this from a distance as a way of setting a strong body-language boundary (like if somebody's following you) or when you're engaged in sending physical strikes, Arthur says.

How to do it: Stand with your feet shoulder-width apart and your hands by your sides. Keeping your toes pointed forward, take a natural step forward with your non-dominant leg, so your feet are staggered. Bend both knees slightly, elevate the back heel, bring your hands up with your hands about 12 inches from your face and your palms facing forward, tuck your chin, and shrug your shoulders slightly. Distribute your body weight between both feet, placing it more in the balls versus heels.

Palm-Heel Strike

When to use it: This is a last-resort move to create escape opportunities. "It's best used when the face of the attacker isn't blocked or covered, and you can reach the face with your arms outstretched," Arthur says.

How to do it: Start in Ready Stance and keep your hands up. Rotating your left hip and shoulder, explosively extend your left palm straight out, with your fingertips straight up and elbow down. Keep your right hand up to protect your face. Immediately recoil your left arm, returning your shoulder and hip to the square ready stance.

With your feet in the same position, send a palm strike with your right hand (be sure to rotate right hip), then try a left-right combination. If you are left-handed, practice a right-left combination. Your hand should stay open (i.e., don't make a fist) and the heel of your palm should make contact with the attacker's nose.

Front Kick to Groin

When to use it: This is another last-resort move to create escape opportunities. It's particularly beneficial against somebody who's tall, Arthur says, especially if you can't reach their face for Palm-Heel Strikes.

How to do it: Start in Ready Stance, keeping hands up. Bend your right leg and drive your right knee straight up. As soon as the right knee is above your waistline, extend your hips (almost bend backward to generate power in the left leg/your loading leg) and kick your right shin directly to the attacker's groin, making sure to keep your toes pointed downward and out of the way. Immediately release your right foot behind you and return to Ready Stance.

Hammerfist Punch

When to use it: Rely on the Hammerfist Punch move in almost any situation where you find yourself in danger, Jory says. It's most effective, though, when used to hit the attacker directly in the face, particularly the nose, jaw, or temple.

How to do it: Start in Ready Stance. Raise your dominant hand up, bending at the elbow (like you're preparing to throw a ball). Rotate your hips toward attacker and bring your dominant arm down, smacking the attacker in face (aim for the nose) with the meaty bottom part of fist. If you're practicing this move, recoil to Ready Stance and repeat. In a real-world scenario, strike the punch and run while the attacker is incapacitated.

Related Articles

Self-Defense Techniques in Martial Arts Essay

Self-defense spots are focused on defending personal well-being as well as someone else’s. They presuppose the usage of physical force to counter the threat.

Self-defense can be maintained with a weapon or without it. The second type is more spread and taught in many martial arts schools.

The techniques of self-defense resemble streetfighting, as they are targeted at the immediate reaction and quickly moves (Jahn, 2012). All actions managed by a person are aimed at making the way to escape clear. Regarding self-defense, the most important thing is to neutralize the villain to stay safe and sound but not to win. Here is the difference between fighting and self-defense. The motivation does not presuppose usual pride or compulsion, etc. Moreover, the emotions typical of fighting, such as anger and frustration are absent.

Needless to say that the self-defense is to be taught. Special training is commonly provided by professionals who are well aware of various fighting techniques. They may mix the moves from different metrical arts as well as create some themselves to choose the most appropriate and easy to manage actions. Self-defense techniques need to be rather simple for any person to utilize them.

Even teens and elderly people are to be able to defend themselves if they got into a troubled situation. People are taught how to use the things they have in everyday life, such as a bag or an umbrella, and it is not considered wrong. Commonly people who are not well-prepared physically refer to this kind of sport, as they feel they are not able to defend themselves. So during the training, they are taught how to use the force of the person who attacks them against himself.

Jahn (2002) underlines that it is very important to prepare for self-defense mentally. A proper mindset allows a person to find the right motivation, be calm and objective, one will even feel less pain and no fear. During the training, a person is taught to enter this state quickly and easily.

In the framework of martial arts, it is forbidden to attack the most vulnerable parts of the human body (genitals, throat, etc.). When we are speaking about self-defense, such an approach is preferable. Being distracted by pain, the villain is less likely to hurt the victim, and the chances for one to escape increase. Of course, in some cases, it is not enough. Thus, it is taught that if a person understands that someone is going to murder, rape or kidnap him/her, and one is not able to escape, the intent should be to kill the villain. Defending one’s well-being, an individual can scream to attract the attention of people nearby, bite, and kick the attacker to run away.

Regarding self-defense, people are trained to use every object as a weapon. Such an approach is called invisible weaponry. The individuals are taught the most simple and effective techniques, such as kicks, lock, and sweeps. One can throw a wallet into the attacker’s face or kick one with a bag. Snapping the credit card, a person gains two sharp objects. Even a dog leash or a belt can be utilized, according to the Japanese and Korean styles of bullfighting.

Thus, self-defense teaches the individuals how to act in life-threatening situations for one not to freeze in terror but to defend and escape. It is important to train and spar several times a week to respond automatically.

Jahn, C. (2002). Hardcore self-defense . New York, NY: Writers Club Press.

Jahn, C. (2012). FTW self-defense . Bloomington, IN: iUniverse.

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IvyPanda. (2020, August 16). Self-Defense Techniques in Martial Arts. https://ivypanda.com/essays/self-defense-techniques-in-martial-arts/

"Self-Defense Techniques in Martial Arts." IvyPanda , 16 Aug. 2020, ivypanda.com/essays/self-defense-techniques-in-martial-arts/.

IvyPanda . (2020) 'Self-Defense Techniques in Martial Arts'. 16 August.

IvyPanda . 2020. "Self-Defense Techniques in Martial Arts." August 16, 2020. https://ivypanda.com/essays/self-defense-techniques-in-martial-arts/.

1. IvyPanda . "Self-Defense Techniques in Martial Arts." August 16, 2020. https://ivypanda.com/essays/self-defense-techniques-in-martial-arts/.

Bibliography

IvyPanda . "Self-Defense Techniques in Martial Arts." August 16, 2020. https://ivypanda.com/essays/self-defense-techniques-in-martial-arts/.

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Huey P. Newton

In defense of self defense, the black panther, june 20, 1967.

Written: June 20, 1967 Source: The Black Panther Vol. 1 No. 3 , June 20, 1967; Pamphlet titled Essays From the Minister of Defense published by the Black Panther Party, 1968, Oakland Transcription/Markup: 2021 by Philip Mooney Public Domain: Marxist Internet Archive 2021. This work is completely free .

Laws and rules have always been made to serve people. Rules of society are set up by people so that they will be able to function in a harmonious way. In other words, in order to promote the general welfare of society rules and laws are established by men. Rules should serve men and not men serve rules. The man is greater than the rules or laws that he constructs. Much of the time the laws and rules which officials attempt to inflict upon poor people are non-functional in relation to the status of the poor in society.

These officials are blind to the fact that people should not respect rules that are not serving them. It is the duty of the poor to write and construct rules and laws that are in their better interest. This is one of the basic human rights of all men.

Before 1776, white people were colonized by the English. The English government had certain laws and rules that the colonized Americans viewed as not in their best interests but as a colonized people. At that time, the English government felt that the colonized Americans had no right to establish laws to promote the general welfare of the people living here in America. The colonized American felt he had no choice but to raise the gun in defense of the welfare of the colonized people. At this time he made certain laws insuring his protection from external and internal aggressions from governments and agencies. One such form of protection was the Declaration of Independence which states, “…whenever any government becomes destructive to these ends it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute a new government, laying its foundations on such principles and organizing its powers in such forms as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.” Now these same colonized white people, these ex-slaves, robbers and thieves, have denied the colonized black man the right to even speak of abolishing this oppressive system which the white colonized American created. They have carried their madness to the four corners of the earth, and now there is universal rebellion against their continue rule and power.

The black people in America are the only people who can free the world, loosen the yoke of colonialism and destroy the war machine. As long as the wheels of the imperialistic war machine are turning there is no country that can defeat this monster of the west. But black people can make a malfunction of this machine from within. Black people can destroy the machinery that’s enslaving the world. America cannot stand to fight every black country in the world and fight a civil war at the same time. It is militarily impossible to do both these things at once.

The slavery of blacks in this country provides the oil for the machinery of war that America uses to enslave the peoples of the world. Without this oil the machinery cannot function. We are the driving shaft; we are in such a strategic position in this machinery that, once we become dislocated, the functioning of the remainder of the machinery breaks down.

Penned up in the ghettos of America, surrounded by his factories and all the physical components of his economic system, we have been made into “the wretched of the earth,” who are relegated to the position of spectators while the white racists run their international con game on the suffering peoples. We have been brainwashed to believe that we are powerless and that there is nothing we can do for ourselves to bring about a speedy liberation for our people. We have been taught that we must please our oppressors, that we are only 10% of the population and therefore we must confine our tactics to categories calculated not to disturb the sleep of our tormentors.

The power structure inflicts pain and brutality upon the peoples then provides controlled outlets for the pain in ways least likely to upset them or interfere with the process of exploitation. The people must repudiate the channels, established as tricks and deceitful snares by the exploiter-oppressors. The people must oppose everything the oppressor supports and support everything that he opposes. If black people go about their struggle for liberation in the way that the oppressor dictates and sponsors, then we will have degenerated to the level of groveling flunkies for the oppressor himself.

When the oppressor makes a vicious attack against freedom fighters because of the way that such freedom fighters choose to go about their liberation, then we know we are moving in the direction of our liberation. The racist dog oppressors have no rights which oppressed black people are bound to respect. As long as the racist dogs pollute the earth with the evil of their actions, they do not deserve any respect at all. And the rules of their game, written in the peoples’ blood, are beneath contempt.

The oppressor must be harassed until his doom. He must have no peace by day or by night. The slaves have always outnumbered the slavemasters. The power of the oppressor rests upon the submission of the people. When Black people really unite and rise up in all their spendid millions, they will have the strength to smash injustice. We do not understand the power in our numbers. We are millions and millions of black people scattered across the continent and throughout the western hemisphere. There are more black people in America than the total population of many countries that now enjoy full membership in the U.N. They have power and their power is based primarily on the fact that they are organized and united with each other. They are recognized by the powers of the world. We with all our numbers are recognized by no one. In fact, we do not even recognize our own selves. We are unaware of the potential power latent in our numbers. In 1967, in the midst of a hostile racist nation whose hidden racism is rising to the surface at a phenomenal speed, we are still so blind to our critical fight for our very survival that we are continuing to function in petty, futile ways. Divided, confused, fighting among ourselves, we are still in the elementary stage of throwing rocks, sticks, empty wine bottles and beer cans at racist cops who lie in wait for a chance to murder unarmed black people. The racist cops have worked out a system for suppressing these spontaneous rebellions that flare up from the anger, frustration, and desperation of the masses of black people. We can no longer afford the dubious luxury of the terrible casualties wantonly inflicted upon us by the cops during spontaneous rebellions.

Black people must now move, from the grassroots through the perfumed circles of the black bourgeoisie, to seize by any means necessary a proportionate share of the power vested and collected in the structure of America. We must organize and unite to combat by long resistance the brutal force used against us daily. The power structure depends upon the use of force without retaliation. This is why they want the people unarmed: This is why they have made it a felony to teach guerrilla warfare. The racist dog oppressor fears the armed people; they fear most of all black people armed with weapons and the ideology of the Black Panther Party for Self Defense. An unarmed people are slaves or are subject to slavery at any given moment. If a government is not afraid of the people it will arm the people and teach guerilla tactics as a means for the survival of the people from foreign aggression. Black people are held captive in the midst of their oppressors. There is a world of difference between 30 million unarmed, submissive black people and 30 million Black people armed with freedom and defense guns and the strategic methods of liberation.

When a mechanic wants to fix a broken down car engine he must have the necessary tools to do the job. When the people move for liberation, they must have the basic tool of liberation: the gun . Only with the power of the gun can the black masses halt the terror and brutality perpetuated against them by the armed racist power structure; and in one sense only by the power of the gun can the whole world be transformed into the earthly paradise dreamed of by the people from time immemorial. One successful practitioner of the art and science of national liberation and self defense put it this way: “We are advocates of the abolition of war, we do not want war; but war can only be abolished through war, and in order to get rid of the gun it is necessary to take up the gun.” (Brother Mao Tse-Tung)

The blood, sweat, tears and suffering of Black people are the foundations of the wealth and power of the United States of America. We were forced to build America and if forced to we will tear it down. The immediate result of this destruction will be suffering and bloodshed. But the end result will be the perpetual peace for all mankind.

Huey P. Newton | The Black Panther Party | Marxist Internet Archive

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This idea refers to situations where a criminal is forced to commit a crime as their only means of self-defense against actual violence, an attack, or the fear of violence. When a felon had no other option but to commit the crime, they are not to be held accountable. However,...

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In order to defend war, the just war theory was developed. The theory offers a number of factors that are seen to be crucial for a conflict to be just. The theory holds that these four principles are the most crucial ones. An important factor is having a just cause. War...

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The topic of gun safety is divisive, especially in America, where many firearms are in the hands of people. Some believe they need firearms for self-defense, while others believe gun owners are more likely to commit crimes. Both licensed and unlicensed firearms in civilian hands are deemed dangerous, rendering the...

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Restricting Gun Licenses and Possession Restricting gun licenses and possession is a contentious issue in the United States, with some in favor and some against it. Some people believe that guns are necessary for self-defense, while others believe that gun owners are more likely to commit crimes. Both licensed and unlicensed...

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Political scientists, foreign personalities, and analysts provide perspectives on international, cultural, and international issues. However, there have been misunderstandings regarding the constitutional proposal accepted by Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, which requires the Japanese military to exercise the right of collective self-defense (CSD). Green and Hornung also debunked several of...

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• Essay on Government

In Protection Of Self-Defense Argumentative Essay Examples

Type of paper: Argumentative Essay

Topic: Government , Criminal Justice , Violence , Crime , Police , Human , Social Issues , Law

Words: 1000

Published: 01/08/2020

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In various debates, individual's position about a certain issue depends on personal experience with the subject of debate or most likely lack of one. In this context, debate concerning bearing arms will be discussed. The aim of this essay is to explain why the right of bearing arms is essential for human rights support and why this right should be protected. The main arguments used are supported by the article of Wheeler Samuel.

Key words: bearing arms, violence, human rights, self-defense, government.

In Protection of Self-Defense

In various debates, individual's position concerning a specific issue depends greatly on personal experience with the debated subject or most likely lack of one. In this context, people who have never experienced an assault or have never been to New York and big cities of the United States are likely to consider that the right to bear arms is harmful for society and their safety on streets. On the other hand, position concerning certain matters might depend on a person's character and self-perception. In this context, an individual might be likely to suggest that he/she has a right for self-defense and how that person was prepared for the self-defense is his/hers personal matter, which should be protected by the constitution. In the framework of these considerations, the aim of this essay is to show why the right of bearing arms is crucial for the support of human rights and why this right should be protected. The main arguments used in this essay are based on the article by Wheeler Samuel.

First of all, irrespective of diverse aspects of human life, which are protected by government in the framework of human rights, there is no government which can predict and this prevent unlawful violation of these rights and eliminate existence violence and crime. Thus, government cannot be always there to fulfill its obligations within the "social contract" with people. In other words, "the right not to be unjustly assaulted qualifies as a 'human right'" (Wheeler, 2001, p.19). Until a certain extent, if a government is not capable of preventing one's death or significant injury of one's health, it should be done by an individual himself. Anyone would agree that such argument is rationale and appropriate for any debate. On the other hand, when bearing arms is mentioned, their opinions change.

The justification for bearing arms is based on the same logical assumptions. Looking at the issue from the point of self-protection and no intention of causing harm to anyone else willingly and on purpose, the rationale of bearing arms is in an individual's desire to survive and live according to the natural laws which were not given nor provided by government or society. Thus, it is an instinctual matter of the human psyche to protect oneself from injury, and firearms are simply an instrument of defense. Wheeler comments on this subject in the following way:

"The core "self-defense" argument for right to bear arms derives from a fundamental right to preserve oneself from harm, conjoined with empirical facts about technology, the reliability of police protection, and reasonably expected threats" (Wheeler, 2001, p.20).

Another substantial argument is that most of cons of bearing arms are situational. They cannot overcome a crucial individual right of self-defense. For instance, the argument that bearing arms might result in more violence than lack of it is based on a situation when a victim in possession of gun might not be able to use it properly or be overwhelmed by emotions and use it under states effect. This case is quite situational and, in fact, such cases are possible, but they do not refer to the essence of arms bearing, but rather to initial psychological verification of person's psychological stability and tendency to use violence in general. Inclination of some people to overreact or have criminal inclinations has nothing to do with giving other people an opportunity and means for self-defense.

Another argument is that banning of arms bearing and possession would not automatically mean that less fire arms would be on the streets and more human lives would be saved. In this context, supporters of arms control forget that most of the fire arms used criminal activities are obtained by illegal means or bought on the black market. Therefore, while a ban of bearing arms would decrease a number of fire arms on streets and public places, it would not result in less criminal activity and use of guns. It would only leave more people helpless and defenseless facing criminal reality of contemporary society. In this context, an individual remains alone to deal with unlawful activity, and the only thing left to hope for is a law enforcement response to that activity (Wheeler, 2001). Although this argument is not intended to undermine efficiency of the law enforcement in fighting crime, from the legal perspective, the police are usually entitled to act only when the crime is already taking place and someone managed to call the police to the crime scene. For a victim, it usually means that the crime has already taken place. It could not be stopped immediately and definitely was not prevented (Wheeler, 2001). On the other hand, bearing of arms gives an individual a chance for self-defense; it provides a victim with means for survival. From societal and legal perspective, self-defense with fire arms decreases the severity of crime conducted. It can save life and decrease a number of injuries imposed. In its turn, the police would have to deal with less grave crime and society would have one of its members alive, in better health and more self-confident, which is another quite important for social stability and healthy functioning.

Wheeler, S.C. (Spring 2001). Gun Violence and Fundamental Rights. Criminal Justice Ethics, 20(1), 19-24.

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Claiming self-defense, Chicago police officer plans to take stand on murder charges in girlfriend's shooting

Pierre tyler, 32, is accused of killing andris wofford — the mother of his 9-month-old child — during an argument over whether he had secretly married another woman..

Cook County Criminal Courts, 2601 S. California Blvd.

Sun-Times file

A Chicago police officer is expected to take the stand later this week at his trial on charges that he killed the mother of one of his children during an argument over whether he had secretly married another woman.

Pierre Tyler, 32, is accused of killing Andris Wofford — the mother of his 9-month-old child — after she confronted him in December of 2021.

Wofford, 27, believed she had found court records indicating Tyler had married a former girlfriend and the mother of his other children, prosecutors said.

“That decision is what cost her life,” Assistant State’s Attorney Michelle Papa told the jury Tuesday.

Tyler pulled out a 9mm handgun and shot Wofford once in the face, Papa said. “He left her to die in a pool of blood in the entryway of her apartment.”

But Tyler’s defense attorney Tim Grace countered that Tyler was defending himself when Wofford was shot. Grace said Tyler had briefly set down his “off-duty gun” and Wofford seized it and pointed it at him.

“He defends himself,” Grace said, adding that Tyler didn’t tell anyone or call for help because “nobody was going to believe him.”

• Off-duty police officer charged with murder after woman found fatally shot in Galewood home

Grace hopes jurors will believe Tyler when his client takes the stand later this week, and said Tyler made “a mistake” by not reporting it.

Absent from the courtroom’s gallery were any uniformed officers, who have been a conspicuous presence at other recent hearings where Chicago police have been the victim of a crime or when they’ve been on trial for alleged misconduct.

Tyler was dressed in a crisp button-up white shirt, yellow tie and dark blue pants. He mostly leaned forward on his elbows at the defense table Tuesday while listening to testimony.

Prosecutors have said surveillance cameras recorded Tyler going to Wofford’s home in the 2100 block of North Nashville the afternoon of Dec. 8 and leaving that night shortly after a neighbor reported hearing a muffled bang from inside the apartment.

Two neighbors testified Tuesday, including a woman who said she heard the couple arguing on Dec. 8 but her husband stopped her from knocking on the door, telling her to give them their privacy.

Another neighbor said she heard “a loud bang” and “possibly a thud” that evening, describing it as unusual and unnerving.

Wofford’s body was found the next day after her father asked to be let into her apartment because she never arrived at his home to pick up her kids or returned his calls.

Jurors saw photos and video of Wofford’s body, with blood pooled below her head, leading several people to leave the courtroom and others in the gallery to weep.

Wofford’s mother testified that she was also concerned about not being able to reach her daughter and contacted Tyler, who offered to pick the mother up from work the day after the shooting.

• Advocates make emotional plea for passage of bill aimed at seizing guns from those accused in domestic violences cases

Tyler acted strangely when he arrived and barely talked on the way to her daughter’s home, she testified.

Wofford’s parents said they were aware that Wofford believed Tyler had secretly gotten married to another woman, apparently after finding some court records online.

But Grace told jurors there was no record of a marriage license and called Wofford jealous and violent, noting that she allegedly sent a text message to someone saying she wanted to kill Tyler over her belief that he had gotten married.

Tyler, a CPD tactical officer who joined the force in 2016, allegedly told investigators he was at Wofford’s apartment but left to meet a confidential informant for work.

At Tyler’s initial hearing on the charges, prosecutors claimed Tyler’s partners said they weren’t with him and that it would be “abnormal” for him to go on his own.

Tyler has been held in custody at the Cook County Jail since he was denied release at his initial hearing.

A spokesman for Chicago police said Tyler is “not an active member” of the department but didn’t immediately respond to a request for more information.

The Civilian Office of Police Accountability, which investigates allegations of police misconduct, provided its final report to the police superintendent in April 2023 on the agency’s investigation into Wofford’s death and an earlier domestic incident that involved Tyler and Wofford.

In January 2022, Judge Mary Brosnahan, who is overseeing the trial, signed an order preventing materials from the investigation being released before the case concluded.

The trial is expected to continue through Friday.

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More Defensive Gun Uses Undermine Government Claims About Armed Civilians

Amy Swearer / @AmySwearer / May 14, 2024

The Biden administration distrusts armed civilians, but these latest examples of defensive gun uses highlight the importance of self-defense in a free society. (Photo illustration: RichLegg/Getty Images

Get your FREE digital copy of The Heritage Foundation’s Founders’ Almanac.

It should be painfully obvious to anyone paying attention that the Biden administration distrusts an armed civilian population and is willing to fudge the truth time and again to defend its untenable positions. But for those living blissfully unaware of the Biden administration’s animosity toward gun owners, it once again demonstrated its animosity in clear terms .

Earlier this month, the Commerce Department’s Bureau of Industry and Security accidentally said the quiet part out loud: It thinks that only the government really can be trusted with firearms, even when the government at issue is notoriously corrupt.

Fortunately, the bureau’s new export regulations—though problematic in many ways—don’t affect the Second Amendment rights of U.S. citizens. They do, however, explicitly push a United Nations-backed talking point that wrongly blames lawfully armed civilians for criminal gun trafficking and insists that guns are safest when in the hands of government actors.

Even if we were to forget the atrocities committed during the 20th century against largely unarmed civilians at the hands of well-armed governments, this line of reasoning would still clash with natural law, which insists that all people have an intrinsic, unalienable right of self-defense.

The reality is that the government simply cannot be present at all times and in all places to protect us from criminal harm, nor should we want to live in a police state where the government has such terrifying power.

Moreover, when given the option to possess the instruments necessary to defend themselves, their loved ones, and their communities from harm, armed Americans routinely show themselves quite capable of doing so in a responsible manner.

Almost every major study has found that Americans use their firearms in self-defense between  500,000 and 3 million  times annually, according to a 2013 report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In 2021, the most comprehensive study ever conducted on the issue concluded that  roughly 1.6 million defensive gun uses  occur in the United States every year.

For this reason, The Daily Signal publishes a monthly article highlighting some of the previous month’s many news stories on defensive gun use that you may have missed—or that might not have made it to the national spotlight in the first place. (Read other accounts  here  from past years.)

The examples below represent only a small portion of the news stories on defensive gun use that we found in April. You may explore more using The Heritage Foundation’s interactive  Defensive Gun Use Database . (Heritage founded The Daily Signal in 2014.)

• April 1, Norway, Maine: After hearing glass break at a neighbor’s home, police said, a man armed himself and went outside to investigate. He discovered a would-be burglar trying to break in and held her at gunpoint until police arrived. The woman was charged with attempted burglary and criminal mischief.
• April 3, Murray, Utah: A man armed with an illegally possessed firearm approached a woman who’d just left a gym and demanded her keys at gunpoint, police said. The woman— a concealed carry permit holder —exchanged gunfire with the would-be carjacker, striking him once. The wounded assailant fled, but he and his getaway driver were later arrested and charged with federal offenses. The woman was treated at a hospital for unspecified injuries.
• April 6, St. Louis: Police said a woman shot and wounded her ex-boyfriend after he acted as though he had a gun, threatened to kill her, and chased her around the block while her young son looked on from her car. The man had a history of domestic violence arrests and previously had used firearms to threaten her, investigators said.
• April 10, Hialeah, Florida: A woman’s ex-boyfriend showed up to her home and, after seeing a male friend of hers leave the residence, physically attacked him. Her friend drew a legally concealed firearm and fatally shot his assailant, police said. The dead man’s lengthy criminal history included stalking, harassing, and assaulting his former girlfriend.
• April 12, Coos Bay, Oregon: A resident shot and wounded an intruder who broke into his home just after midnight, armed with a golf club, police said.
• April 15, Chicago: When a gunman opened fire on people sitting outside a Greyhound bus station downtown, a concealed carry permit holder drew his own firearm and shot back. The gunman apparently fled and neither the permit holder nor any bystander was injured, police said.
• April 17, Georgetown County, South Carolina: A man acted in justified self-defense when he fatally shot the ex-boyfriend of a woman at whose apartment he was staying, police said. The former boyfriend arrived at the apartment, threatened to shoot the man, and reached into his pocket for a gun. The man drew his own gun and shot his would-be assailant first. Police were looking for an accomplice, who faces charges of attempted murder.
• April 20, Terre Haute, Indiana: Arriving home, a man noticed a truck was following him as he pulled into his driveway . When the resident got out of his car, the truck driver “ let out this battle cry yell and just floored the gas ,” police said. He sped directly at the resident, who tried to jump out of the way. As the truck struck him and his car, the resident drew his gun and fired “about 10 shots” to defend himself, police said. The truck driver, whom police said was naked and suffering from gunshot wounds, climbed out of a window and ran away. Police arrested him after a chase in a stolen vehicle. The resident’s injuries included two broken bones in a lower leg.
• April 25, San Antonio: In the span of a few hours, two armed residents shot three burglars in two separate incidents, police said. In the first, a resident shot and wounded an intruder who broke into his home. In the second, a resident shot and wounded two burglars after he caught them stealing roofing materials from his driveway.
• April 29, Houston: Police said that when an intruder broke into the home of a well-known criminal attorney and charged at a resident with a metal object, one of the homeowner’s relatives shot and wounded him . The intruder fled, but the homeowner and others caught and held him in the street until police arrived to arrest him.

The Biden administration may think that ordinary civilians are less capable of responsible gun ownership than government actors, but as these defensive gun uses demonstrate, ordinary civilians have every reason to push back on such unfounded claims.

Time and again, armed civilians like the ones highlighted here underscore why the right to keep and bear arms is so critical to a free society. Even in countries that, unlike the United States, fail to protect such a critical individual right, ordinary civilians retain an unalienable natural right to self-defense.

We should correct false notions that armed civilians are inherently bad and government monopolies on the instruments of lethal force are good—and not bite hook, line, and sinker into authoritarian notions of international gun control.

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Home — Essay Samples — Government & Politics — Barack Obama — Operation Geronimo Persuasive

Operation Geronimo: a Justified Use of Force in Self-defense

• Categories: 9/11 Barack Obama Osama Bin Laden

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Words: 886 |

Published: Apr 17, 2023

Words: 886 | Pages: 2 | 5 min read

Table of contents

Introduction, operation geronimo.

• Dunlap, C. (2019, February 01). Yes, the raid that killed Osama Bin Laden was lawful. Retrieved November 21, 2020, from https://sites.duke.edu/lawfire/2019/01/31/yes-the-raid-that-killed-osama-bin-laden-was-lawful/
• Hodgin, S.L. (2014). Killing Osama Bin Laden: Legal and Necessary. Widener Law Review Delaware Law: Widener University. https://widenerlawreview.org/files/2014/09/3-Hodgin.pdf
• International law, codification, legal affairs, legal, committee, Terrorism, charter, criminal accountability, administration of justice, jurisdictional immunities, cloning, safety of United Nations and associated personnel, ad hoc, Diplomatic Conferences, Reports of International Arbitral Awards, Summaries of International Court of Justice Judgments and Advisory Opinions, Legislative Series, Juridical Yearbook, Repertory of Practice of United Nations Organs, Books (n.d.). Retrieved November 21, 2020, from https://legal.un.org/repertory/art51.shtml
• Legality of Targeted Killing Program under International Law. (2019, October 31). Retrieved November 21, 2020 https://www.lawfareblog.com/legality-targeted-killing-program-under-international-law
• Wpengine. (2014, November 14). The Legality of Killing Osama bin Laden. Retrieved November 21, 2020, from https://harvardnsj.org/2011/05/the-legality-of-killing-osama-bin-laden/          

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Self-Representation Right Survives ‘Sovereign Citizen’ Defense

By Bernie Pazanowski

A trial judge erred by revoking a defendant’s right to self-representation because he insisted on using the long-discredited legal argument that he was a “sovereign citizen,” the Eighth Circuit said Monday.

Anthony Willis knowingly and intelligently waived his right to counsel and his insistence that he make “sovereign citizen” arguments and defenses in his trial for being an alleged felon in possession of a firearm wasn’t “serious and obstructionist misconduct” sufficient to revoke the waiver, the opinion by Judge James B. Loken said for the US Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit.

Because Willis insisted on making the arguments ...

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