James Turner Johnson teaches at Rutgers University. His books include The Holy War Idea in Western and Islamic Traditions and Morality and Contemporary Warfare.
The mainstream of Christian ethics has contended that there can be a legitimate or “just” use of military force—legitimacy being determined by a variety of factors, such as the presence of a “just cause,” “right authority,” “last resort,” and the use of “means proportional to the end,” to cite some of the traditional language
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