Can the morality of war be grounded in a mutually beneficial contract between opposing parties? Daniel Statman and Yitzhak Benbaji utilize the social contract tradition to propose a framework for understanding the ethics of conflict. By analyzing both the decision to initiate hostilities and the conduct of military operations, the authors argue that the rules of war are best understood as fair agreements designed to mitigate violence and promote peace.

Scholars in political philosophy and international relations frequently cite this work for its rigorous application of contractarianism to the complex field of just war theory. Readers often note the dense, academic nature of the prose, which serves as a foundational text for those studying the intersection of ethics and military conduct.