Legitimate Authority and “Just War” in the Modern World

Legitimate authority is a widely touted yet rarely analyzed concept in discourse about war. In this essay, I articulate and analyze the schema of just war theory that has dominated philosophical discourse regarding war since the early medieval period. Although the requirements for a “just war” appear to exceed the simple proclamation by a legitimate authority , in fact, all of the other requirements are subject to the interpretation of the legitimate authority . In other words, just war theory reduces, in actual practice, to the requirement of legitimate authority. A consideration of the nature of contemporary warfare further suggests that just war theory is the vestigial idiom of a world that no longer exists. What remains today of just war theory is a dangerous rhetorical weapon, deployed by the leaders of both sides in every belligerent conflict.