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Mark Osiel: The End of Reciprocity: Terror, Torture and the Law of War

Cambridge University Press, 2009, pp. 1–667

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Notes

  1. Thanks to Andrew Alexandra for comments on this paper. The material in the first section of this critical review is derived from a short review of this book I wrote for the International Harvard Review vol. 31 no. 1 March 2009 p.84.

  2. See Seumas Miller Terrorism and Counter-terrorism: Ethics and Liberal Democracy, Blackwell Publishing, 2009, Chapter 6, ‘Torture’.

  3. And have argued as such elsewhere (Miller 2009 op. cit. Chapter 5, Section 3, ‘Targeted Killings’.

  4. See Seumas Miller ‘Killing in Self-defence’ Public Affairs Quarterly Vol. 7 No. 4 1993 for an account of reciprocity in relation to the justification of killing in self-defence.

  5. Frontline video, Kill/Capture May 10th 2011 at frontline@pbs.org.

  6. For this reason, it might be argued that such so-called 'targeted killing' is not so much targeted killing as it is precision killing in a context in which combatants are not easily distinguishable from non-combatant civilians.

  7. For more on these distinctions see Miller 2009 op. cit. Chapter 5 ‘Terrorism, War and States of Emergency’.

  8. Whether or not the police complied with all the relevant legal and moral principles on this occasion is another matter. See Gordon and Miller 'Shooting to Kill: Is Anyone Responsible for the Death of Jean Charles de Menezes?' in (eds.) Simon Bronitt, Miriam Gani and Saskia Hufnagel, Shooting to Kill: Socio-legal Perspectives on the Use of Lethal Force (Hart, 2012).

  9. On the face of it, the only proportionality recognised by the reciprocity principle would be that derivable from reciprocity, e.g. if X kills 100 of Y’s civilians then Y might be entitled to kill up to 100 of X’s in retaliation.

References

  • Edge, D. & Grey, S. (2011). Kill/Capture. Frontline Season 29 Episode 12, originally aired May 10th, 2011. Accessed on February 22, 2013 at http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/kill-capture/.

  • Gordon, I. & Miller, S. (2012). Shooting to Kill: Is Anyone Responsible for the Death of Jean Charles de Menezes? In (eds.) Simon Bronitt, Miriam Gani and Saskia Hufnagel, Shooting to Kill: Socio-legal Perspectives on the Use of Lethal Force. Oxford: Hart Publishing.

  • Miller, S. (1993). Killing in Self-Defense. Public Affairs Quarterly Vol. 7 No. 4.

  • Miller, S. (2009). Terrorism and Counter-terrorism: Ethics and Liberal Democracy, Hoboken NJ: Blackwell Publishing.

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  • Osiel, M. (2009). The End of Reciprocity: Terror, Torture and the Law of War. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics (an Australian Research Council Special Research Centre), Charles Sturt University, Canberra, Australia

    Seumas Miller

  2. 3TU Centre for Ethics and Technology, Delft University of Technology, The Hague, Netherlands

    Seumas Miller

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  1. Seumas Miller
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Correspondence to Seumas Miller.

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Miller, S. Mark Osiel: The End of Reciprocity: Terror, Torture and the Law of War . Criminal Law, Philosophy 8, 659–669 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11572-013-9209-x

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