The doctrine of the moral equality of combatants holds that combatants on either side of a war have equal moral status even if one side is fighting a just war while the other is not. This chapter examines arguments that have been offered for and against this doctrine, including the collectivist position famously articulated by Walzer and McMahan’s influential individualist critique. We also explore collectivist positions that have rejected the moral equality doctrine and arguments that some individualists have offered in its favor. We defend a noncategorical version of the moral equality doctrine, according to which combatants on either side of a just war sometimes (but not always) have equal moral status. On our view nonculpable combatants are not liable to attack even when they fight for an unjust cause.

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Is it morally permissible to spy on allied countries? What type of otherwise criminal acts may covert intelligence agents commit in order to keep their cover? Is it permissible to subject children of high-value targets to covert surveillance? In this article, I ask whether democratically elected politicians ought to rely on advice from ethics committees in answering moral choices in secret policy. I argue that ethics committees should not advise politicians on how they ought to conclude secret moral choices. Instead, we can mandate ethics committees to provide advice aimed at improving the moral reasoning behind moral decisions in secret policy. Such advice, I argue, may add value to the decision process independently of whether it increases the chances of reaching morally correct conclusions.

What are the justifications and constraints on the use of force in self-defense? In his book The Morality of Defensive Force, Jonathan Quong presents the moral status account to address this and other fundamental questions. According to the moral status account, moral liability to defensive harm is triggered by treating others with less respect than they are due. At the same time, Quong rejects the relevance of culpability to the morality of defensive harming. In this article I argue that this rejection of culpability is unfounded and that Quong fails to establish his account as superior to the culpability account of liability to defensive harm.

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