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100 Int'l Rev. Red Cross 445 (2018)
Law and Morality at War

handle is hein.journals/intlrcs100 and id is 437 raw text is: \IORXl I XI VT X,,RW a Adil Ahmad Haquet Book review by Lisa Hecht, Postdoctoral Researcher at the Department of Philosophy, Stockholm University. Over the last decade, the philosophical study of war has turned into a flourishing research area. The ongoing debate on the morality of war challenges some widely accepted claims about how wars can be fought justly.' Notably, some scholars raise challenges to concepts like the equality of belligerents and civilian immunity, suggesting that there might be a large gap between law and morality. Insofar as international humanitarian law (IHL), also known as the law of armed conflict, is concerned, civilian immunity from direct attack applies equally to just and unjust combatants. However, IHL does not consider the moral considerations guiding just conduct in war. We need to know whether this omission is justified, or whether the law needs to change to better map onto morality. Adil Ahmad Haque's book, Law and Morality at War, takes up this important question. Well-versed in both the philosophical and legal debates, Haque offers an insightful interpretation and critique of IHL. He argues that the law should enable those who adhere to it to better conform to their moral obligations not to kill unjustly. One problem with the current state of the law is the vagueness of some parts of IHL, which makes it difficult for combatants to know what their moral obligations are. Haque seeks to amend this by suggesting refinements of the law that build on moral principles. Following the general trend in the ethics of war scholarship, Haque puts individual moral rights and duties at the centre of his philosophical thinking about war. He is committed to the doctrine of reductivism, which holds that the moral norms governing violence in war are the same as the moral norms Published by Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2017. © icrc 2019

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