We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 17 July 2009
This chapter examines instances in which an expansive concept of “self-defence” has been advanced by a state to justify using force to protect citizens abroad, either by military rescue or by forcibly deterring those who threaten their safety.
Powerful states have long claimed a legal right to use military force (“gun-boat diplomacy”) to this end. In the nineteenth-century case of Durand v. Hollins, the US Circuit Court of Appeals said:
Under our system of government, the citizen abroad is as much entitled to protection as the citizen at home. The great object and duty of government is the protection of the lives, liberty and property of the people composing it, whether abroad or at home; and any government failing in the accomplishment of the object, or the performance of the duty, is not worth preserving.
At issue in Durand was the President's constitutional authority, without obtaining a Congressional declaration of war, to order a naval bombardment of San Juan del Norte (Greytown), Nicaragua, as reprisal against those of its inhabitants who “had perpetrated acts of violence against the US nationals and their property.” Although in upholding this exercise of plenary power, the Court was declaring US, not international, law, it acted in recognition of what it claimed was the widespread state practice of “humanitarian intervention” and “citizen rescue.”
These practices, whatever their currency at that earlier time, have now become problematic.
To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.
Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.
