Chapter 3 reveals how violent individuals and a violent state are structured in the Constitution. Here, violent, White self-determination (the right of White individuals to overthrow government) and liberalism (the systemic differences central to a liberal state) mix with republicanism (a decentralization of authority that privileges violent acts of citizens, a group most often defined as propertied, White men). In Article IV, Section 4, the Second Amendment, and the Fifth Amendment, this chapter reveals the key formulations and tensions of American violence.

Drone programs in the counterterrorism context rest on the use of force in self-defense not against an (imminent) act, but against individuals in the light of their personal or behavioral characteristics. Because drone programs are motivated by the objective of permanently addressing future threats before they materialize, technology and legal rhetoric are used as instruments to authorize action against individuals who are not presently perpetrating terrorist acts, nor even clearly preparing, such acts. Some states active in the transnational war on terror have proposed a legal framework for the continuous anticipation of armed attacks against individuals who show signs of hostile intent. These changes in military strategy and legal discourse are not merely the result of how states decide to use force in the counterterrorism context, but also of what technology allows them to do. As such, drones facilitate and arguably intensify the phenomena of the individualization and dematerialization of the use of force. Although the interpretation of self-defense proposed by some states active in the war on terror is still highly contested on some points, the chapter shows that even if some limitations remain, concessions to the extensive interpretation of some limitations appear to have a direct cascade effect on the remaining checks because these limitations are interconnected.

Continuing with Lina’s story, this chapter looks into the various ways in which the FARC victimhood frame is contested. Starting with the government, and drawing on interviews with soldiers, psychologists, police officers, and other disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration experts, this chapter outlines the government’s main contestation of the guerrilla victimhood frame: specifically, that they are perpetrators against their own comrades, especially the female ones. But the paramilitaries – illustrated by stories from various former AUC members – also contest the guerrilla victimhood frame with frames of their own, saying that they are the true self-defense forces and that they never would have had to take up guns if not for the guerrillas. This chapter shows the complexity and blurred lines between perpetrators and victims and analyzes the problematic outcomes of such contentious and highly gendered framing contests when ex-combatants demobilize and try to become civilians alongside each other.

Helen Frowe argues against a common view of the standard Trolley Scenario according to which it is permissible but not required to kill the one as a side effect of saving the five. She argues that saving the five and killing the one is morally required in that scenario. I defend the intuitive verdict that it is permitted but not required to turn the trolley in the Trolley Scenario. First, I show that the crucial premise of Frowe’s argument – the premise that one has a duty to prevent harm to others when one can do so without violating anyone’s rights, and without bearing an unreasonable cost – is false. And second, I present an independent argument (one originally offered by Frances Kamm) for the permissibility of not turning the trolley in the Trolley Scenario.

The clash between the First and Second amendments in the US Constitution – the First guaranteeing free speech and the Second guaranteeing the right to bear arms – leads into a discussion of legal interpretations of the Second Amendment from 1791, when the states ratified the Bill of Rights, to the present. Using a corpus linguistic analysis of the Second Amendment, with a focus on "the right to keep and bear arms," and an examination of the US Supreme Court decision in District of Columbia v. Heller (2008), we see that, just like any other text, whether a literary work, a sacred book, or an everyday communication like a memo or shopping list, legal interpretation is always contingent, always subjective, and and always subject to reinterpretation.

This opinion is a crucial part of the problematic foundation of the law concerning for the admissibility of evidence of battered woman’s syndrome in cases of self-defense. The court denied the defendant’s appeal for her manslaughter conviction because she killed her husband while he was sleeping. The reasoning of the court made it difficult, if not impossible, for defendants in the state to argue self-defense based upon long-term physical and emotional abuse resulting in battered woman’s syndrome.

Weaponizing phone lines to enforce white spaces has proven an effective tool for the passively fearful. In most cases, it lends anonymity, allowing a racially fragile citizen to lodge a complaint and recede into the shadows as armed agents of the State assume responsibility. Akin to keyboard warriors and internet trolls, 911 abusers can lob unsubstantiated attacks and escape involvement or scrutiny themselves. But this type of color line enforcement is a step removed from the action. It relies on a 911 dispatcher and a trained law enforcement officer to act on the frivolous, race-baiting tip. Some white space defenders want to be more involved, to take the law into their own hands under the guise of self-defense. Thanks to gun rights lobbies and state legislatures across the country, now they can. No trend better encapsulates the State’s increasing acquiescence to civilian weaponization of racial fear than Stand Your Ground laws. These laws fly in the face of traditional self-defense doctrine, posing a serious threat to public safety “by encouraging armed vigilantism

This chapter introduces the jus ad bellum: the rules of law determining when states may resort to war or, more broadly, the use of armed force. These rules must be distinguished from the jus in bello: these are the rules of law that apply in armed conflict (known as international humanitarian law). In order to put the current jus ad bellum rules into perspective, the chapter begins by introducing the concept of collective security and demonstrating how this was applied during the League of Nations era. The following sections set out the relevant rules of the UN Charter on the prevention and regulation of recourse to the use of force, with a particular focus on the prohibition on the threat or use of force. The chapter also discusses the collective use of force, meaning the use of force authorized by the Security Council, and the unilateral use of force in self-defense. Finally, the chapter examines whether new exceptions to the prohibition of the use of force are emerging -- in particular, humanitarian intervention and the responsibility to protect.

This chapter introduces the jus ad bellum: the rules of law determining when states may resort to war or, more broadly, the use of armed force. These rules must be distinguished from the jus in bello: these are the rules of law that apply in armed conflict (known as international humanitarian law). In order to put the current jus ad bellum rules into perspective, the chapter begins by introducing the concept of collective security and demonstrating how this was applied during the League of Nations era. The following sections set out the relevant rules of the UN Charter on the prevention and regulation of recourse to the use of force, with a particular focus on the prohibition on the threat or use of force. The chapter also discusses the collective use of force, meaning the use of force authorized by the Security Council, and the unilateral use of force in self-defense. Finally, the chapter examines whether new exceptions to the prohibition of the use of force are emerging -- in particular, humanitarian intervention and the responsibility to protect.

Chapter 17 attempts to pin down a moving target, cyber and its use and utility in armed conflict. The cyber targets chosen by China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea are detailed. The chapter defines cyber “attacks,” differentiating them from cyber “operations” – akin to a felony-misdemeanor distinction. Cyberattacks are found to be a use of armed force, in the sense of UN Charter Article 2(4), raising the right of victim states to respond with armed force in self-defense. Potential cyber conflicts are classified as international or non-international based upon their perpetrators. The difficulties of attribution of cyberattacks are detailed, including sovereignty and military necessity. A counter to cyberattack is belligerent reprisal, which is explored. Cyberattacks on critical national infrastructure (CNI) are a major problem. After defining CNI, the US position on responses is discussed. Recent changes in US cyber policy authorize far greater cyber retaliation and reprisal, as well as providing federal funding to carry them out. Finally, CNI’s weak link, the unwillingness of civilian corporations to fund their own cyber protection, is noted.

David Little presents Roger Williams as a seventeenth-century champion of conscience. Williams was expelled from Massachusetts Bay that ostensibly prized free exercise, but in fact recognized it only within narrow bands of orthodoxy. Williams thereafter prized freedom of conscience in the charter for the Providence Plantations and Rhode Island. A central principle for Williams is the distinction between the “inward” and “external” fora. The “inward forum” is the conscience, a “spiritual power” changeable by reason and persuasion. The “external forum” is “outward behavior,” meaning actions that can be coerced by the governing authority through force, in order to protect life, property, and other interests. Williams provocatively labeled coercive acts against conscience as “soul rape” and “piracy,” indicating how deeply and intimately these violated the person. Williams maintained a fruitful relationship with the Narangansett Indians, having shown them great respect, as the people who provided him refuge when he was expelled from Massachusetts Bay. He didn’t co-opt their government, and fully respected their ability to choose religion (or not), in the quiet of their own internal fora.

This chapter studies the idea that Americans and Europeans hold different views on global security. Generally, it is considered that the EU side demonstrates a stronger adherence to positivism in international law, while the US adopts policy-oriented methodologies. This translates into different views of the actual content of the UN Charter rules on the use of force, for example of the permissibility of self-defense against attacks by non-State actors, calls for new exceptions to the prohibition of the use of force and in relation to controversial issues, such as the legality of the anticipatory self-defense. The chapter offers a critical look at the alleged difference by studying the US-led military coalition fighting against the so-called Islamic State (IS) in Iraq and Syria. This reveals a gradual acceptance of the more expansionist interpretation put forward by the US. Indeed, the case of the US-led military coalition against IS is one where European States - and several other western States - originally steered clear from murky legal grounds only to find themselves ultimately embracing an extensive reading of the right of self-defense, and relying for the first time, whether explicitly or implicitly, on the controversial “unable and unwilling” doctrine to justify military operations abroad.

This chapter explains the cosmopolitan nature of the law of peacebuilding per se and, second, identifies laws and international developments that have indirect effects on peacebuilding and peace law by creating a process of building peace. The practices of states and other actors and their expectations of appropriate conduct create a dialectic that makes legal obligations a cost that states must calculate in their decisions to comply with hard and soft law requirements, obligations, and contested or denied responsibilities. We compare international lawas cosmopolitanism to the other major paradigms used to explain peacebuilding success and failures -- realism, liberalism, constructivism -- demonstrating the ways in which our approach complements and diverges from these approaches. We next discuss the concept of a human right to peace and then address peace as an outcome of international law. We conclude this chapter with some thoughts about the importance of the development of peace law.

Violence emerges many times in medieval literature, either in the form of war or of personal violence. This paper examines a selection of narratives where various types of domestic violence and criminal activities leading to or based on violence are presented. Against the backdrop of an intensive theological and philosophical discourse on violence from St. Augustine to Thomas Aquinas, this chapter investigates violence in the private spheres of married couples (Marie de France), in the public sphere of the court to eliminate a threatening outsider (Nibelungenlied), within the family, pitting a mother-in-law against her daughter in law (Mai und Beaflor), which ultimately leads to matricide, then among friends and relatives (Boccaccio’s Decameron), and finally violence in the name of personal self-defence (Heinrich Kaufringer). As the analysis demonstrates, violence was ubiquitous in medieval society, but the poets always reflect also on legal conditions, the threat to society at large resulting from violence, and on the position of the individual when confronted with violence.

This chapter and the two that follow cover the period from 1838 to enactment of the Fugitive Slave Act in October 1850. The chapter begins with an examination of the covert networks that helped fugitives from enslavement traverse the Borderland in at least a dozen places between Quincy, IL, and Chester, PA. It then discusses the cultural roots of the violence of mastery, and dozens of incidents in which slaveholders and slave catchers brought the violence of mastery into the Borderland, rampaging through entire communities, breaking into homes, and on a few occasions killing and dismembering escapees who resisted. The chapter explores the impact of this violence on the lives of abolitionists, free blacks, and Underground activists in the Borderland and the manner in which the Underground Railroad adapted its operations to meet the challenge by embracing speed and stealth. Finally, the chapter discusses the dynamics of fugitive rescues in the Borderland, noting particularly the different dynamics of urban and rural rescues and the rarity of interracial cooperation in these efforts.