Abstract
This article examines how military legal practitioners use the language of morality and when they refrain from doing so, and it considers the correlations between these presentations of morality and state violence. The article investigates such presentations of law and morality in the context of Israel’s legal institutions, exploring the impacts on Israel’s dealings with Palestinians, as well as in the context of colonial and settler colonial projects, where law and its depiction as a reflection of morality have long provided legitimation and justification. The article identifies a waning in the depiction of military legal work as a moral endeavour in the early 2000s, when the military legal system, aided by other state legal authorities, promoted a new paradigm—“armed conflict short of war”. This paradigm facilitated increased violence and integrated legal considerations and lawyers into decision-making forums. The article suggests that the decline in moral claims is a product of the intensified integration of legal work into military decision making rather than the increase in violence in and of itself. This integration changed the nature of legal work in a manner that, for some officers, proved hard to fit with a notion of morality.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 27-49 |
| Journal | State Crime Journal |
| Volume | 14 |
| Issue number | 1 |
| Publication status | Published - 14 Oct 2025 |
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