The Historical Development of Combatant Moral Equality

Combatant moral equality is commonly presented as the “orthodox” view within the just war tradition. This article shows that it is neither a first principle nor foundational orthodoxy of just war as some contend. It was not present in Augustine. It found its initial expression, but with a Godly foundation, in the chivalric tradition. Grotius secularized the laws of war, accepted the possibility of combatant moral independence from the justice of the war, but denied that combatants on both sides could be moral equals. Vattel presented combatant moral equality in its current form and explained it as necessary for the sake of peace among the society of states. The moral equality of combatants (MEC), then, results from an amalgamation of various historical developments in just war thought. Specifically, it follows from the fact that states, as the highest authority in international politics, accept simultaneous ostensible justice, in order to enable symmetrical rules of warfare that allow states to honor the law even during war.