Ethics and War Series: "Asymmetrical Wars: The Three Hardest Questions" David Luban
David Luban is University Professor and Professor of Law and Philosophy at Georgetown University. He has written extensively on topics in just war theory, international criminal law, professional ethics, legal philosophy, and issues growing out of the War on Terror, particularly torture and the mistreatment of detainees. Luban’s books include Lawyers and Justice, Legal Modernism, Legal Ethics and Human Dignity and, most recently, International and Transnational Criminal Law (with Julie O’Sullivan and David P. Stewart). Luban has testified before both the House and Senate Judiciary Committees on the role of lawyers in US torture policy. He has been the Leah Kaplan Visiting Professor of Human Rights at Stanford Law School, and in 2011 he will be a fellow of the Institute for Advanced Studies at Hebrew University. This talk focuses on the "three hardest questions" which, according to Luban, are: 1. When do civilians count as direct participants in hostilities? 2. How should state armies deal with voluntary human shields? 3. How much risk should soldiers assume to protect innocent "enemy" civilians?
The Ethics and War series is sponsored by:
The McCoy Family Center for Ethics in SocietyThe Stanford Humanities Center The Center for International Security and Cooperation [CISAC] The Stanford Creative Writing ProgramThe Program on Human Rights Stanford Summer TheaterThe Program on Global JusticeStanford Continuing StudiesTaube Center for Jewish Studies Stanford Institute for Creativity and the Arts (SiCa)The John S. Knight Fellowship Program