Fighting Unjust Wars: Political Authority, Tragic Choices, and the Value of Obedience

Abstract

Legitimate authorities occasionally issue mistaken directives. Do we have a duty to obey such directives? This question is especially pressing in cases in which a) obeying a mistaken directive would lead us to take part in the perpetration of a serious injustice, and b) the victims of the injustice are not themselves subject to the authority that issued the directive. The clearest case is when a legitimate authority, acting in good faith, orders us to fight a war that is in fact unjust. I address the question of whether we have a duty to obey such orders by responding to a number of important objections that Thomas Christiano, Christopher Kutz, and David Estlund raise against the view that I originally defended in my article “Political Authority and Unjust Wars.”