EXPLAINING THE PRINCIPLE OFMALA IN SE

The Morality of War: A Review and Research Agenda

“…What is the relationship between the sanctity/degradation foundation (which captures the intuition that some actions are wrong on the grounds that they are degrading, unnatural, or impure, Haidt, 2012) and judgments of weapons that are mala a se? The mala a se principle applies to weapons that are bad "in and of themselves", and as such has been leveraged to develop prohibitions on, for example, landmines, blinding lasers, incendiary weapons and biological weapons (Dige, 2012;Human Rights Watch, 2015;International Campaign to Ban Landmines, n.d.). In contemporary military affairs, the use of (autonomous) armed drones is hotly debated, with opponents arguing against "killer robots" in ways that appear -anecdotallyclosely aligned with concerns about the sanctity of human life, the degrading effects of involving a machine in the kill-chain, and a visceral disgust and anger at the unnaturalness and unfairness of remote warfare (Asaro, 2012;Chamayou, 2015;Garcia, 2015;Human Rights Watch, 2005).…”