Civilian Immunity in War: Its Grounds, Scope, and Weight

The immunity of civilians, or non-combatants, from deadly violence in war is enjoined by the centrepiece of the jus in bello prong of just war theory, the principle of discrimination. It is also a central tenet in consequentialist accounts of the morality of war, for it provides an obvious way of limiting killing, mayhem, and destruction in war. Even pacifists have good reason to give serious consideration to the issue of civilian immunity. Elizabeth Anscombe famously charged pacifism with obliviousness to the moral difference between killing soldiers and killing civilians in war, and argued that this makes pacifists— not in intent, but in effect— complicit in the rampant scepticism regarding moral constraints on the ways of waging war.