The State Obligation to Protect - eScholarship

This dissertation proposes an explanation of why the state has a special moral obligation to protect individuals in its legal territory against violence committed by private actors. Having an explanation of this obligation will allow us to better determine a number of its major characteristics, including to whom the state owes this obligation--the scope of the obligation--apart from those persons actually located in the state's legal territory. It argues that the state has a special moral obligation to protect because the state is the fiduciary of those individuals in its legal territory and has a fiduciary obligation to advance their purposes reasonably. Since obtaining security from violence is a normal and fundamental purpose of individuals, the state has a fiduciary obligation to protect them from private violence.To support this conclusion, the dissertation evaluates whether the most plausible explanations of the special obligation to protect can account for our moral intuitions. Apart from the fiduciary explanation, it considers and rejects four alternatives. First, the obligation to protect might arise as an application of an inherent duty to promote justice, including by protecting against acts of violence. Second, it might arise because the state normally contributes causally to the harm from most or all acts of violence that occur in its territory, so it has an obligation to protect against that harm. Third, it might arise because the state implicitly promises to protect by communicating a claim that it has a monopoly on the legitimate use of force. Fourth, it might arise because the exercise of coercive political control is legitimate only if the state simultaneously protects against violence. After rejecting these alternatives, the dissertation explains, defends, and applies the fiduciary account to the question of the scope of the special obligation to protect.