Just war and terrorism

In this paper I will argue that traditional just war theory provides the salient criteria for a polity‟s violent actions against groups that are not themselves, or at least, need not be polities. Traditional just war theory has its origins particularly in the writings of Aristotle, Cicero and St. Augustine1, however was developed in the Scholastic and Neo-Scholastic periods by Aquinas, Grotius, Suarez, Vattel and Vitoria. Recently just war theory has received considerable pedigree as lying behind the codification of armed conflict in international law through The United Nations Charter and The Hague and Geneva Conventions. Contemporary apologists of just war theory are deeply influential in ethical and political debates and include writers such as Germain Grisez, John Finnis, Joseph Boyle, James Johnson and Michael Walzer.2