A Contractualist Defense of Limited Moral Equality of Combatants

I develop a novel contractualist defense of a limited moral equality of combatants thesis, on which just and unjust combatants enjoy equal moral status in some wars. This possibility reveals overlooked conceptual space for intermediary positions between orthodox just war theory and revisionism. I argue that following a limited moral equality of combatants thesis foreseeably protects both civilians’ and combatants’ strong interests in survival more robustly than alternative pacifist and revisionist principles. So such a thesis cannot be reasonably rejected. Contractualism therefore entails a limited moral equality of combatants thesis. In defending this thesis, I also address the concern that contractualism cannot be applied to just war theory due to the massive noncompliance inherent to warfare. I conclude by contrasting my contractualist approach with the recent contractarian one by Yitzhak Benbaji and Daniel Statman. I demonstrate that the contractualist approach avoids several counterexamples that plague Benbaji and Statman’s contractarian account.