Mandatory Rescue Killings*

Abstract

MANY believe that the needy have a (prima facie) moral right to receive assistance from those able to provide it, particularly so when their life is at stake. For example, many believe that those who are starving to death have a moral right that the better off (in their own country and abroad) help them gain access to food. Many also believe that a child who is in danger of drowning in a shallow pond has a moral right that passers-by rescue him. Disagreements such as there are on these issues do not pertain to the appropriateness of conferring such rights on the needy in the first instance but, rather, to the precise contours of rights to assistance. (Whoexactly isunderaduty toprovide foodtothestarvingor tohelp the imperilled? Up to what point are they under such duty? And so on.) Now, some individuals need assistance because they are subject to a lethal threat at the hands of another person, from which they cannot defend themselves. Do they have a right against potential rescuers that the latter provide them with assistance by killing the attacker? To put it differently, does the duty of good Samaritanism include a duty to kill in defence of another? Most people believe that one is sometimes morally permitted—indeed, that one has the right—to kill one’s attacker in self-defence, at least in those cases where one would die (or suffer a serious injury) otherwise. There is, in fact, a considerable body of work on the subject. By contrast, rescue killings have received far less attention. Moreover, whatever attention they have received has been focused on their permissibility, not on their obligatoriness. And yet, whether or not individuals are under a duty to kill in defence of another is of enormous moral, political and legal importance. Thus, it is sometimes said that powerful states are not merely entitled to wage a war of intervention in defence of a genocidal tyrant’s victims, but are also under a moral duty to do so (provided that they abide by the rules of war).