Jeff McMahan / 4
Collective Crime and Collective Punishment
JEFF MCMAHAN
Introduction
George Fletcher emerges in his writing, as in his life, as recent work than to the abbreviated discussions in the a colorful and highly individual figure. The last thing first volume of the Grammar. I think, however, that my one expects of him is the surrender of individual iden- arguments will be highly germane to Fletcher’s larger tity to an anonymous submersion in the collective. Yet project in the three volumes of the Grammar, and that doctrinally he is a collectivist. In his recent writings, he some of the objections I raise here anticipate problems has been seeking to collectivize just about everything: that will arise in the subsequent two volumes. action, responsibility, guilt, liability, self-defense, crimi- Before turning to war and international criminal law, nal punishment, international criminal law, action in it is worth observing how pervasive the collectivizing war, war crimes, and so on. tendency has become in Fletcher’s work. His recent dis- It is, however, only in the final section of The Gram- cussions of self-defense continue to defend the account mar of Criminal Law, volume 1, that Fletcher discusses to which he has been attracted for decades. He believes collective guilt and the alleged collective nature of the that individual self-defense is not justified solely by the crimes within the jurisdiction of the International Crim- rights or inviolability of the individual victim but by the inal Court (ICC).1 Yet the penultimate sentence of the imperative of defending the collective and its legal or- book promises that “in volume 2, in discussing specific der, since “an attack against one is an attack against all,” crimes in international criminal law, I will address the so that a defense of one is also a defense of all.3 He ar- way in which the collective guilt of nations and other gues that an “individualist” approach to the justification groups should enter into the sentencing process of in- of individual self-defense is inferior to a “society-based” dividuals charged with mass atrocities” [339]. Indeed, a approach, partly because only the latter, he claims, can review of the tables of contents for volumes 2 and 3 con- support a reasonable requirement of proportionality.4 firms that war and war-related crimes of international Although it is frequently claimed that the right of na- criminal law, both of which he understands in collec- tional or collective self-defense can be understood by tivist terms, will be the major preoccupations of these analogy with the more fundamental right of individual forthcoming volumes. Discussions of collective guilt and self-defense, Fletcher seems to see national self-defense international criminal law therefore seem foundational as more basic and thus reverses the traditional direction to Fletcher’s project as a whole. Yet the discussions in of the analogy, claiming that “the individual right of the Grammar, volume 1, do not break new ground but self-defense makes sense as an extension of the idea that merely recapitulate ideas and arguments that he has nations can use force to maintain dominance over their stated and defended at greater length in other recent own people and their own territory.”5 work.2 Because I will focus in this article on Fletcher’s Fletcher holds that domestic crime also has a collec- collectivist orientation toward war and the crimes of in- tive victim, and that criminal punishment addresses ternational criminal law, I will refer more often to the the wrong, or harm, done to the collective rather than more extensive discussions of these issues in his other that done to the individual. He argues that “even if we subscribe to the importance of harm in defining crime, and harm means harm to a victim, justice nevertheless require[s] abstraction from the particular victim. In a ho- Jeff McMahan, author of The Ethics of Killing: Problems micide case, the issue at stake is the value of life in gen- at the Margins of Life (2002), is Professor of Philosophy, eral, not the life of the particular decedent. It would be Rutgers University, New Jersey. odd to claim that it would be a lesser crime, in principle,
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to kill a bereft homeless beggar than to kill a mother of of a life” can refer either to the value of the contents of six.” The victims of crime cannot, therefore, appear in the life or to the value of the person whose life it is. If the criminal law as individuals but instead “must be we interpret the phrase in the second sense rather than understood as representatives of the public as a whole” the first, it becomes coherent and plausible to claim that [260-61]. an act of homicide causes an equal loss of valuable life It is worth noting that the illustration that Fletcher irrespective of how good the contents of the life lost gives here does not support this view of criminal pun- would have been for the individual victim.6 Much the ishment. We are not required to focus on the value of life same point could be made by saying that the criminal in general rather than the values of individual lives to law grounds the prohibition of homicide in individual explain why the law treats the beggar and the mother as rights rather than in the value of life. equal in standing as victims. The concept of “the value
War Crimes as Collective Crimes
The crimes of international criminal law are, according formal matter only individuals are prosecuted, but they to Fletcher, different from domestic crimes in that they are prosecuted for crimes committed by and in the name not only have collective victims but are also perpetrated of the groups they represent. . . . The individual offend- by collective agents. As Fletcher notes, “the crimes of ers are liable because they are members of the hostile groups concern to the ICC are connected one way or another that engage in” the commission of these crimes.10 with . . . war” [333]. And he agrees with Rousseau that I will not dispute that three of the crimes prosecuted war is “something that occurs not between man and at the ICC—aggression, crimes against humanity, and man, but between States. . . . A State can have as its en- genocide—are usually attributable to some form of col- emies only other States, not men at all.”7 He therefore lective agency. Whether these crimes necessarily involve contends that for individuals, “war creates an alterna- collective agency, in the way that aggression and geno- tive identity. The person who goes to war ceases, in part, cide necessarily have collective victims, is a question I to be an individual and becomes a soldier in a chain of will not address here. What is surprising is Fletcher’s command. As Rousseau emphasized, in his alternative claim that war crimes involve collective rather than in- identity, the soldier is a mere servant of the state. He is not dividual agency. He offers two types of evidence in sup- an autonomous agent. . . . As Rousseau conceived of war, port of this view, one textual, the other a blend of the the only actors were states pitted against each other” factual and the conceptual. [334]. He cites two passages in the text of the Rome Statute Yet the idea that the only legally recognized agents in that are supposed to show that war crimes are there con- war are states seems incompatible with the Rome Stat- ceived as collective acts. “The collectivist orientation is ute’s declaration in Article 25(1) that the ICC “shall have evident,” he writes, “in the overriding commitment of jurisdiction over natural persons.”8 International crimi- the court that ‘the most serious crimes of concern to the nal law, in contrast to international law in general, thus international community as a whole . . . not go unpun- holds individual persons rather than states accountable ished’” [333]. He then notes further that “the Rome Stat- for the crimes within the jurisdiction of the ICC: namely, ute . . . qualifies the definition of war crimes so that the aggression, crimes against humanity, genocide, and war International Criminal Court should take jurisdiction crimes. In this respect, the Rome Statute seems to move over war crimes ‘in particular when committed as part beyond the collectivist orientation of the Hague and Ge- of a plan or policy or as part of a large-scale commission neva Conventions to an explicit recognition of individ- of such crimes.’ Thus an element of collective execution ual liability for crimes related to the conduct of war. Yet of the crime reenters the picture. In the final analysis, Fletcher claims that “something curious occurred in the war crimes issue from armies gone awry. This is what nature of these offenses when they became the basis for makes their commission ‘of concern to the international individual liability at the International Criminal Court: community as a whole’” [335]. Isolated acts by individu- they were subtly transformed into collective offenses.”9 als are not what are of most concern to the international It is his contention that the crimes prosecuted at the community. ICC, which “will be the major focus of volume 2” of the There is, however, a simpler and more plausible ex- Grammar [332], “are collective crimes. It is true that as a planation and interpretation of the quoted passages
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from the Rome Statute. This is that the resources of the Fletcher’s interpretation of the Rome Statute as treat- ICC are limited, so that the court must be selective in ing all crimes within the jurisdiction of the ICC as col- the cases it pursues. It cannot feasibly prosecute every lective crimes also seems to be directly contradicted by reported instance of a war crime; therefore it will make Article 25(3), which states that “a person shall be crimi- most efficient use of its resources if it confines itself to nally responsible and liable for punishment for a crime the most egregious war crimes. Such crimes are those within the jurisdiction of the Court if that person: (a) that implicate military or political leaders because they Commits such a crime, whether as an individual, jointly are manifestations of a policy, or those that have caused with another or through another person.”13 This seems harm on an unusually large scale. These are the war to be an explicit recognition that an individual, acting crimes that are of greatest “concern to the international in his or her capacity as an individual, can be guilty of community as a whole” because their prosecution and a war crime. punishment are likely to have the greatest expressive Fletcher’s second reason for claiming that war crimes and deterrent significance. are collective acts is that at least most of the “grave An explanation of this sort is favored by William breaches” identified in the Geneva Conventions and cit- Schabas, who writes that the court must “be concerned ed again in the Rome Statute—for example, deporting not only with ‘the most serious crimes’ but also with a person, or compelling a person to serve in the forces the most serious criminals, generally leaders, organis- of a hostile power—are acts that cannot be done by a ers and instigators. Lower-level offenders are unlikely single person acting alone. They are instead “deeds that to attract the attention of a prosecutor whose energies by their very nature are committed by groups” [332]— must be concentrated, if only because of budgetary con- despite the suggestion of Article 25(3) that they can be straints.”11 He goes on to observe that when the drafters done by individuals. But the second of Fletcher’s claims proposed the qualifying clause in Article 8(1) quoted by does not follow from the first—an act that cannot be Fletcher, “many States were opposed to any such limita- done by a single individual does not entail that it must tion on the scope of war crimes, and only agreed to the be a collective act. That it takes the action of various provision if the words ‘in particular’ were included.” people, some of whom may act in an official capacity, to In other words, the phrase “in particular” was inserted deport a person does not mean that the individual acts precisely to block the inference that the conditions that of these people together constitute a collective act. And follow it were to be understood as necessary conditions even in cases in which the individual acts do compose a either of war crimes or of the eligibility of war crimes collective act, the collective agent need not be the state, for prosecution by the ICC. Yet Fletcher claims that “the the nation, the army, or even the embassy. The relevant Rome Statute imposes several filters against the pros- collective may be nothing more than a tiny group of con- ecution of routine crimes committed by individuals. The spirators, one or more of whom occupy positions that homicide must be part of a ‘plan or policy’ or constitute give them the legal power to have a person deported. ‘part of a large-scale commission of such crimes.’”12
Collective Guilt
Fletcher does not offer an analysis of collective action to lation may become implicated in the crimes of the lead- support his views about collective crime in war. He does, ership: by acquiescence or omission. however, write at length about collective guilt. One of No dictator rules in a vacuum. To muster power he must en- the central themes of his recent work is that collectives, joy the support of the military, the implicit emotional consent and nations in particular, can be bearers of guilt. This of business leaders and professionals, and the tolerance of is presumably an indirect way of discussing collective the public as a whole. In the face of a dissenting public inces- criminal action, since it would seem that there cannot be santly banging on pots . . . or marching in the streets . . . no collective guilt in the absence of collective wrongdoing, dictator can maintain power. The failure to protest generates a basis for holding the public at least partially responsible for or collective crime. the ongoing dictatorship.14 What are the bases, conditions, or criteria of collective guilt? Surprisingly, Fletcher says relatively little about This passage invites a number of comments. First, it this. He does suggest one way in which an entire popu- seems excessively optimistic. Although nonviolent resis-
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tance can be even more effective than violence in a vari- sent; hence the costs of protest within the country are ety of contexts, its potential for success depends on cer- prohibitive. Only exceptionally heroic people will pro- tain conditions. In an extremely impoverished country test, and they are too few to have any effect. But there is in which the army is well paid, a dictator may flourish another powerful state whose economic support is vital quite well with virtually no popular support at all, so to the totalitarian state. This powerful state is a democ- that even widespread expressions of dissent have little racy and thus a mass protest by its citizens would be practical significance. Recall the joke about Anastasio So- without significant cost for them and would have a high moza: he enjoyed the support of virtually the whole of probability of success in forcing a stop to the aggression. the National Guard. The Nicaraguan people generally, But suppose they do nothing. They seem more respon- including the business leaders and professionals, had sible by omission for the wrongful actions of the totali- been united against him for quite some time before it be- tarian state than the citizens of that state are. came possible to overthrow him as a result of the with- In any case, it is doubtful whether responsibility or drawal of U.S. support under Carter. And no one bang- guilt by omission, either by the citizens of the state or by ing pots, no matter how many of them there might have the citizens of another more powerful state, is genuinely been, would have survived for long in Stalinist Russia. collective. Suppose there are active dissenters who cou- Second, why should responsibility for the acts of a rageously protest in public and even withhold taxes to government—that is, responsibility beyond that attribut- avoid any complicity in the aggression. Do they share in able to the government itself—lie solely or even primar- the collective guilt? Do children? ily with the citizens whose government it is? The natural Fletcher’s answer, I think, would be that the guilt of the answer is of course that it is their government and thus collective does not entail individual guilt on the part of it acts with their consent, in their name, on their behalf, every member. He writes elsewhere of aggression by an and in their interest. Yet these claims may be false, even army that “the collective army might be liable for aggres- when they are asserted by the government itself. As in sion, but nothing about the guilt of individuals [in that the case of the Somoza regime, the government may be army] follows from this charge.”15 Similarly, a nation as a illegitimate, ruling by force with the support of a foreign whole may be guilty of aggression even though individu- power. In such a case, many of the citizens of the foreign al dissenters who are members of that nation are not. power may have greater responsibility for the acts of the Yet if some individual members of a collective are illegitimate government than its own citizens do. guilty while others are not, what is the point of speak- Here is another a case of this sort. Suppose that a to- ing about collective guilt? Why not seek instead to iden- talitarian state has wrongfully invaded a neighboring tify the guilty individuals and to determine the extent of state. The citizens of the totalitarian state are subject to their guilt? I will return in a moment to this question of violent repression for the slightest expressions of dis- the cash value of collective guilt.
The Bases for the Attribution of Collective Guilt
One worry that Fletcher has about his own notion of col- identity with the nation should extend to the downside lective guilt is that it seems to imply that guilt can be as well as the upside of communal life.”17 inherited by one generation from another. On this issue This argument presupposes a subjective criterion for he seems to be inconsistent. At one point he says that collective guilt. Suppose that such a criterion is right and Karl Jaspers was right to reject the idea that guilt can that it can be rational to feel pride in the achievements of be transmitted from one generation to another.16 Yet at one’s ancestors. It still would not follow that guilt could other points he seems to embrace this idea, as it seems be inherited from one’s ancestors. Pride contrasts with to follow from his claim that nations themselves can be shame, not guilt. If one can rationally feel pride in the bearers of guilt together with the fact that nations en- deeds of one’s ancestors, it may follow that one can ratio- dure over many generations. “The idea that guilt passes nally feel shame for their deeds as well. But nothing fol- from generation to generation,” he writes, “expresses . . . lows about the rationality of feeling guilt for their deeds. the consequence of attributing guilt to the nation rath- Collective identity might be a rational basis for collective er than to particular individuals,” as he himself does. shame without being a basis for collective guilt. “Children, after all, . . . feel pride about the achieve- In any case, collective pride is frequently irrational— ments of their forebears. It follows, it seems, that their far more often, in fact, than most of us recognize. Some-
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times the basis of collective identification is arbitrary, as most rational guide to an assessment of those collective ac- in the case of people who, in psychology experiments, tions. If the nation feels guilt for its actions, this is a clear sign developed manifest in-group bias toward others who, of a collective consciousness that it was the nation that had gone to war and had also engaged in the atrocities for which they were falsely told, shared with them a tendency to it is blamed.19 over- or underestimate the number of dots flashed on a screen.18 And even in cases in which there is a rea- If this were right, it would lead to intractable indetermi- sonable basis for collective identification, there may be nacies in practice, for a sense of guilt is never universal no rational basis for collective pride in the acts of only within large collectives, and we would be left wonder- some members. A couple of decades ago, a young wom- ing what to conclude when some proportion of a nation an from the Midwest won several gold medals at the felt guilt while the remainder did not. But a subjective Olympics. I was then living in her home town, and its criterion of collective guilt cannot be right, for thinking citizens swelled with pride and walked a bit taller while it so, or feeling that it is so, cannot make it so. A wholly she was in the news. But it is irrational to suppose that misplaced sense of guilt, even if widely or universally their mere residence in the town gave them reason to shared, cannot constitute the reality of collective guilt, think better of themselves because of her achievements. just as not thinking it so, or thinking it not so, cannot Fletcher not only presupposes but also explicitly make it not so. It would be absurd to suppose that a endorses a subjective criterion of collective guilt. He group of conscienceless people, acting wrongfully in a writes: coordinated way, with all their wills concerted, would be exempt from guilt if none of them felt any guilt, ei- If we are trying to determine the collective that is expressed in the actions of going to war and committing crimes in the ther individual or collective. The criteria of guilt are ob- name of that war, then a shared sense of guilt might be the jective.
Collective Punishment
Despite these reservations, let us grant for the sake of whether the destruction of a Palestinian village could be argument that nations can be the agents of unjust wars justified by appeal to collective guilt. Indeed, although and of crimes committed within wars, and thus can be Fletcher concludes that none of Dershowitz’s arguments the bearers of guilt for those acts. What follows? One’s “can assuage our sense of injustice about blaming and immediate thought is that if there is collective crime, punishing the collective for crimes actually carried out there ought also to be collective punishment. There is by individuals,” he suggests that there is more to be some discussion of this in Fletcher’s recent work, much said—in particular, “that behind these rationalizations of which gives the impression that he disapproves of for collective punishment lurk deeply held sentiments collective punishment. For example, he criticizes Alan of collective guilt. The proponents of collective punish- Dershowitz’s proposal that Israel should identify a Pal- ment assume that Palestinians are guilty as a collective estinian village that has at some point been “used as a for nurturing a culture that takes pride in suicide bomb- base for terrorists” and threaten, without bluffing, to de- ers. This is not an unreasonable assessment of the way stroy that entire village in response to the next terrorist the entire culture contributes to the actions of a few.”20 attack, though without killing its residents. Yet his criti- In this concluding passage, Fletcher thus suggests cisms of Dershowitz focus on two points that have noth- that there could be a justification for collective punish- ing to do with collective guilt. He notes, first, that Der- ment based on collective responsibility for a culture that showitz’s argument appeals to claims drawn from the sanctions terrorism and nurtures terrorists, despite our law of complicity, which have no application in the case uncomfortable sense, possibly fallible, that it would be of an entire village; and, second, that Dershowitz tries unjust to punish people for acts committed by others. to locate sole responsibility for the destruction of the He does seem to reject the kind of collective punishment village with the terrorists who would act in defiance of that “implies the arbitrary punishment of some people Israel’s threat, as if Israel would make no contribution to not for what they have done but simply because they the destruction of the village at all. Both these criticisms are members of the same group.”21 Yet he seems to think are cogent but they leave entirely open the question of that his notion of collective guilt can underwrite a prac-
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tice of collective punishment directed against the collec- Fletcher’s notions of collective crime and collective tive itself rather than against individuals, and certainly guilt raise a parallel problem about national defense if not directed against all the individuals who together we think, as I do, that the basic moral justification for constitute the collective. This view seems at least im- defensive action in war appeals to responsibility for a plicit in certain passages, such as the one quoted earlier wrong whose prevention or correction constitutes a just to the effect that the liability of the army does not entail cause for war. If a nation as a whole is guilty of a wrong the guilt of the soldiers who compose it. Furthermore, that provides another nation a just cause for war, what there is this passage about inherited guilt: “If the nation basis is there, other than a merely conventional one, for bears guilt . . . and . . . has a life greater than its constitu- distinguishing between legitimate and illegitimate tar- ent members, then the guilt would seem to pass to the gets of defensive attack? Could we concoct a notion of next generation—not necessarily to individuals but to a defensive attack against the nation as a whole, or as a the nation as a whole.”22 collective, that is somehow not directed against, or not Fletcher does not explicitly discuss the possibility of intended to harm, those members of the collective who punishing a nation itself, as a bearer of collective guilt, are not individually guilty? Again, there is no discus- without punishing individual members of the nation sion of this possibility in Fletcher’s work, perhaps for who are not individually guilty. Perhaps there is good good reason. Yet the idea that a nation as a whole can reason why this idea does not come up for discussion: perpetrate and be guilty of a collective crime leaves it namely, that it seems quite impossible to punish the na- mysterious not only why any form of collective punish- tion as a whole in a discriminate way, that is, in a way ment seems unjust when some individuals are not indi- that harms only those individual members whose acts vidually guilty, but also how there can be a requirement have made a sufficient contribution to the collective of discrimination in war. crime to make them guilty as individuals.
Is Individual Guilt Mitigated by Collective Guilt?
As I have noted, Fletcher is not much concerned with writes that “the worst part of this tendency toward uni- defending collective punishment and he is not con- versal jurisdiction is the belief that if Sharon had been cerned at all with the idea of collective liability to de- guilty of a crime against humanity, he could have been fensive action. He finds the practical relevance of his judged and sentenced in abstraction from the nation in view about collective guilt in a surprising place: in the whose name he acted as military commander. Belgium mitigation of individual guilt. He argues that collective was not in a position to judge or even to think about guilt may function to mitigate individual guilt in the the complicity of the entire Israeli nation in any crime way that provocation mitigates guilt in the common law Sharon might have committed.”24 Fletcher’s suggestion of homicide. “If a nation bears guilt for the homicidal is that whatever guilt Sharon bore for the massacres was tendencies of its people,” he suggests, “then individual mitigated by his having acted as official agent of the na- perpetrators should arguably be less guilty and their tion of Israel. punishment should be mitigated. As the provoked killer But what is the precise explanation of the mitigating is guilty only of manslaughter [rather than murder], the force of acting as an agent of a collective? Fletcher can- killers who act in the name of the nation should—if the vasses an earlier case in which an agent of the KGB who analogy holds—be liable for a mitigated offense.”23 As I had carried out assassinations in Germany was judged noted at the beginning of this paper, this promises to be by the German Supreme Court to bear diminished li- a central theme of volume 2 of the Grammar. ability because he acted in the capacity of an agent of Fletcher argues that it is unjust to prosecute individ- a collective, the KGB.25 Yet, according to Fletcher, this uals for their role in what he believes to be collective case does not provide the right model for explaining crimes in isolation from the relation these individuals the supposed reduction of Sharon’s guilt. For the KGB have to the collective. Commenting on Belgium’s effort was complicit in the assassin’s action by virtue of hav- to prosecute Ariel Sharon for crimes against humanity ing commanded it. The relation between this collective because of his role in the massacres of Palestinians in the entity and the perpetrator is treated by the law as causal, Sabra and Shatila camps in Lebanon in 1982, Fletcher but the relation between Israel and Sharon’s action was
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not causal and hence cannot count as complicity. Fletch- he writes, “was based on the perception that the Phalan- er then argues that what a collective such as Israel may gists were active and autonomous actors who bore a full be guilty of is the establishment of a culture in which an share of guilt, thereby implicitly reducing Sharon’s.”29 It agent such as Sharon may be deprived of the ability to may seem that Fletcher is here assuming that guilt for understand the wrongness of his action. The guilt for the massacres is a zero-sum matter, but he explicitly de- the massacres must therefore be distributed between the nies this. Rather, in Fletcher’s reasoning, Sharon’s guilt two: the collective and the perpetrator who acted as its was diminished because he was merely an accessory to agent.26 the crime rather than the perpetrator. This view of the mitigating function of collective guilt Fletcher thus identifies two principles of mitigation is held by Fletcher to have wide applicability. He claims in what he considers to be collective crimes: first, that that “this conception of distributed guilt should have the guilt of the collective mitigates that of the individual had a bearing on the sentencing of Eichmann; it should who acts in some sense as its agent, and, second, that the have influenced our perception of the crime -commit guilt of an individual who commands or facilitates the ted by Timothy McVeigh; it should have come into play commission of a crime is mitigated by the intervening when the East German border guards were put on trial agency of the perpetrator. In the case of the Soviet assas- for doing what the ideology of their society preached,” sin, the implications of these two principles are that the that is, shooting East Germans who sought to flee across guilt of the KGB officers who ordered the assassinations the wall to West Germany.27 There are, however, serious is mitigated both by the collective guilt of the Soviet na- problems with these claims. McVeigh was not acting in tion that sustained the culture in which they operated, accordance with norms or values prevalent in his cul- and by the intervening agency of the assassin; while the ture. And the case of the German border guards seems guilt of the assassin was mitigated both by the collective to be a case of complicity, like the case of the KGB assas- guilt of the Soviet nation and by the complicity of the sin, rather than a case involving collective guilt, since KGB. they were acting under orders and not in accordance There is, in addition, a third form of mitigation that with the values accepted in the culture but suppressed is implied by Fletcher’s account that he does not explic- by the government. itly discuss. This is that in cases of this type, the guilt of the collective is further mitigated by the interven- ing agency of both the agent or agents in positions of command and the immediate perpetrators. In the case Though Fletcher denies it, this looks like of the massacres at Sabra and Shatila, the varieties of a zero-sum account of guilt, according to mitigation work in the following way: The nation of Israel exercises what Fletcher considers a noncausal in- which when one agent takes a share, fluence on Sharon, thereby mitigating his guilt. Inhis the shares of other agents diminish position of command, Sharon is complicit in the action correspondingly. of the Phalangists, thereby mitigating their guilt, just as the guilt of the KGB mitigates that of the assassin. But the intervening agency of the Phalangists also mitigates Sharon’s guilt, and the collective guilt of the Israeli na- Even in the case of Sharon, this explanation makes lit- tion is mitigated by the intervening agency of both Sha- tle sense given that there were a great many people in Is- ron and the Phalangists. The mitigation of guilt there- rael, probably the vast majority, who had been exposed fore comes full circle—there is the mitigation of guilt to the same “cultural influence” as Sharon but had no all around. Sharon’s guilt is doubly mitigated by the difficulty perceiving the wrongness of his exploiting collective guilt of the nation of Israel and the interven- his position of command to facilitate massacres of inno- ing agency of the Phalangists. The Phalangists’ guilt is cent people. Sharon was hardly an “accidental offender mitigated by the complicity of Sharon. (It would have whose actions bespeak the mentality of the crowd.”28 been doubly mitigated by the collective guilt of Israel Yet Fletcher identifies another mitigating factor in had they been Israeli forces. Presumably, according to Sharon’s case: the intervening agency of the Lebanese Fletcher’s view, their guilt is further mitigated instead Phalangist militias that were the immediate perpetra- by the collective guilt of the Lebanese Christian com- tors of the massacres. “The mitigation of Sharon’s guilt,” munity, of which they were members.) And, finally, the
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collective guilt of Israel is doubly mitigated as well, first There is already altogether too much mitigation of le- by the intervening agency of Sharon and then by the in- gal liability for criminal action in war. A single act of tervening agency of the Phalangists. murder in domestic society is treated as a serious matter Though Fletcher denies it, this looks like a zero-sum by the law. For a variety of reasons—retribution, social account of guilt, according to which when one agent defense, deterrence, and so on—it is held to be of great takes a share, the shares of other agents diminish cor- importance to bring the murderer to account. When an respondingly. However, as Fletcher is well aware, the unjust war is fought, the result may be the wrongful kill- number of participants in a crime can increase indefi- ing of many millions of innocent people—murder mil- nitely without any individual’s guilt diminishing at all. lions of times over—but who is ever brought to account? Each can be fully guilty no matter how many there are. The civilian citizens of the state that initiated the unjust That Sharon saw himself as acting not in his private ca- war are not legally liable and are generally not thought pacity but on behalf of the nation of Israel, and that he to be morally responsible either. In law, the combatants was himself a product of Israeli culture—these facts do who fought the war are not guilty of any crime provided nothing, in my view, to mitigate his individual guilt. they fought within the limits defined by the law of jus These same types of condition may obtain in domestic in bello. And what of the political and military leaders crime without having any mitigating effect. In ordering who made the crucial decisions about whether to fight the murder of business rivals, for example, a Mafia don the war and how to fight it? The case of Ariel Sharon is may see himself as acting on behalf of and for the good hardly atypical: an Israeli commission of inquiry found of the Family, of whose culture he may be a loyal prod- that he was not criminally responsible for the massacres uct. But we do not treat these facts as having deprived he oversaw; and he was subsequently elected Prime him of the ability to understand either the wrongness Minister of Israel. In short, when unjust wars are fought or the criminality of murder. Nor does his acting vicari- and vast numbers of innocent people are slaughtered, ously through willing subordinates mitigate or dilute it usually turns out, by some sort of legal alchemy, that his guilt. That would be too easy a way to avoid a charge no one is responsible, no one is guilty, no one is liable, of murder. Similarly, if Sharon intended the slaughter of and no one is punished—a happy outcome for all those the Palestinians, if he could not do the job himself, if he whose guilt is reciprocally diminished by the guilt of could count on the Phalangists but not necessarily on others until there is none left for anyone at all. Israeli forces to do the job thoroughly, and in particular In his opening speech at the Nuremberg trials, Justice if he thought he could count on people with theories like Jackson, the U.S. chief prosecutor, observed that “under Fletcher’s to allocate most of the blame to the Phalan- the law of all civilized peoples,” it has been “a crime gists, I see no grounds for mitigating his guilt for the for one man with his bare knuckles to assault another. killings. I do not claim that all of these suppositions are How did it come that multiplying this crime by a mil- true—I do not know whether Sharon intended a mas- lion, and adding fire arms to bare knuckles, makes it a sacre to occur—only that if they are, Sharon’s guilt is legally innocent act?”30 Fletcher has tried to provide an undiminished by his use of the Phalangists to achieve answer, but I believe that Jackson’s challenge remains his ends. unanswerable.
NOTES
1 George P. Fletcher, The Grammar of Criminal Law: American, that book to which I will refer either has been articulated by Comparative, and International, volume 1: Foundations (New Fletcher elsewhere or constitutes an elaboration of, or is at York: Oxford University Press, 2007), sec. 8.6. [I will hereaf- least consistent with, claims he makes elsewhere, including ter refer to this book simply as the Grammar. Bracketed page in the Grammar. I will write as though the ideas in Defending numbers in the text refer to this volume.] Humanity are attributable to Fletcher alone, though this is a fiction I adopt purely for brevity of exposition. 2 See, in particular, George P. Fletcher, Romantics at War 3 George P. Fletcher, Rethinking Criminal Law (Boston: Little, (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2002), hereafter Brown & Co., 1978), 869. RW; and George P. Fletcher and Jens David Ohlin, Defending Humanity: When Force is Justified and Why (New York: Oxford 4 Fletcher and Ohlin, DH, 58-62. Also see George P. Fletcher, University Press, 2008), hereafter DH. The latter is coauthored “Punishment and Self-Defense,” Law and Philosophy 8 (1989): with Fletcher’s colleague, Jens Ohlin, but all the material from 201-215. Fletcher seems to think that the individualist ap-
Winter/Spring 2008 Jeff McMahan / 12
proach must exclude the aggressor’s interests from the pro- 15 Fletcher and Ohlin, DH, 90. It is possible that Fletcher portionality calculation but that the society-based approach would not accept the extension of this reasoning to the rela- must include them on the ground that the aggressor is “an- tion between a civilian collective and its individual members, other member of the same society of independent selves, with since he holds that the exemption of individual combatants interests that cannot be ignored, even if he acts wrongfully” from responsibility for the action of the collective of which (DH, 60). But there is no reason why an individualist approach they are agents is a special case. cannot take account of the aggressor’s interests, provided such interests are appropriately discounted for his liability. 16 Fletcher, RW, 147. 5 Fletcher and Ohlin, DH, 59. 17 Id., 142-43. 6 See Jeff McMahan, The Ethics of Killing: Problems at the Mar- 18 Henri Tajfel, “Experiments in Intergroup Discrimination,” gins of Life (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), 241. Scientific American 223 (1970): 96-102. 7 Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Social Contract, in Social Con- 19 Fletcher and Ohlin, DH, 196-97. tract: Essays by Locke, Hume, and Rousseau, trans. Gerard Hop- 20 Id., 197-200. kins (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1947), 249-50. 21 Fletcher, RW, 156. 8 United Nations, ����������������������������������������Rome Statute of the International Crimi- nal Court
Criminal Justice Ethics