Cambridge Legal Theory Discussion Group: 'Emma J Curran: Killing, Self-Defence and Nonresponsible Threats'

Abstract

Most of us recognise the permissibility of self-defence in at least some instances; take the case of Villainous Aggressorin which an innocent person is attacked by a villain who intends to kill them. I think most would agree that the necessary defensive killing of the villain, by the innocent person, would be permissible. However, other cases of self-defence are not as straightforward. Jonathan Quong proposes an account of self-defence which attempts to both provide an explanation of the general permissibility of self-defence, and to provide an explanation of the impermissibility of certain defensive killings. In this paper, I proceed by outlining Quong’s account of self-defence, before arguing that Quong’s initial account of self-defence is mistaken. In particular, I claim that Quong is mistaken on two fronts: he, firstly, misdiagnoses the wrongdoing in a salient case on which his account is based; and, secondly, a key argumentative step he makes to avoid a counterexample weakens his account. Motivated by these concerns, I propose and justify an amendment to his account. Finally, I demonstrate that the amended account can deal with a series of difficult counterexamples to Quong’s theory proposed by Jason Hanna (2012).

Sessions are pre-read and the article is available on Dropbox.