Max Matthews

Dying to Help: Toward an Ethical Framework for Understanding Humanitarian Intervention Max Matthews

The use of military force to prevent or stop the systematic violation of human rights, otherwise known as humanitarian intervention, is a topic immersed in ethical and legal controversy. In this book, Max Matthews addresses this controversy by developing a comprehensive theoretical framework, grounded in the concept of universal human rights, for understanding the pragmatic and normative contours of this type of military action. He argues that humanitarian intervention is morally required in certain circumstances, despite traditional norms of state sovereignty, but that intervention much conform to a strict set of criteria that he explains in detail. The author then discusses potential avenues of reform in international law to accommodate the ethically obligatory nature of humanitarian intervention. The analysis should be useful for all who study humanitarian intervention, and especially for political and moral theorists and scholars of international humanitarian law.