Consent, Forcible Intervention, and Internal Justification to Use Force

Abstract

Consent has become an increasingly common legal justification for states wishing to intervene in internal strife. While the literature on this issue has increased exponentially in recent years, basic questions remain unanswered. In this brief piece, I will focus on two tricky issues: (a) Who can consent to the use of military force within a state? and (b) Under what circumstances can consent legalize forcible intervention? Concerning the latter question, this contribution identifies a missing link: usually, legal discourse deals with the issue of consent in disconnect from the question whether the internal resort to force was itself just. In this comment I suggest a preliminary way to mend this gap.