Unraveling Emergency Justifications and Excuses for Terrorism

Abstract

One significant strategy for justifying or excusing indiscriminate terrorism is to invoke ‘emergency’ circumstances. This paper examines two such arguments from extremity whereby overriding the principle of non-combatant immunity is claimed to be either justified or excused. Both approaches recognize that the right of non-combatant immunity should not necessarily be held above the value of survival, whether construed as individual or communal survival; yet, neither provides a convincing argument as to when and why the survival of some innocents ought to counterbalance the harms or rights violations of indiscriminate terrorism. However, once one begins to unravel the existing arguments from extremity used to excuse or justify indiscriminate terrorism, one discovers a broader rationale for conceivably excusing or justifying such acts and which does not require an emergency per se.