In addition to having a just cause, a resort to war or use of military force must be proportionate in order to be morally justified. In this essay, Mellow argues for the need of a counterfactual baseline with moral qualifiers when making the proportionality evaluation. In defending his proposal, he also contends that the relevant goods and harms that are weighed in the proportionality evaluation are not as open-ended as is sometimes presumed.
To read or purchase the full text of this article, click here.
