Michael Robillard

Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics, University of Oxford

Michael Robillard is a postdoctoral research fellow at the Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics, University of Oxford, as part of an ERC Advanced Grant on collective responsibility and global terrorism. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Connecticut in 2016. Prior to that, he was a resident research fellow at the Stockdale Center for Ethical Leadership at the United States Naval Academy. Michael’s past research has focused on the overlap between normative theories of exploitation and present-day military recruitment. He has also written on the ethics of autonomous weapons as well war and its relation to future generations. Michael is an Iraq War veteran, United States Military Academy graduate, and former Airborne Ranger.

Entries written by Michael Robillard

Blog

Moral Forests and Just War Trees

By Michael Robillard

“Forest” Joshua Mayer. Used under: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/

‘For God and County’

‘For our nation and its way of life’

‘For the man who was fighting to the left and to the right of me’

These have been the justifications given by political leaders and soldiers alike, for time immemorial, as to why wars must be fought or why they themselves chose to fight or stay. And despite our assessment of the overall soundness or appropriateness of such justifications, the brute fact remains that these reasons mobilise nations and keep people at war. Noticeably absent from this list are such justifications as, ‘for reasons of proportionality’, ‘for reasons of legitimate authority’, and ‘for ad bellum and in bello principles’.