Open research questions in War, Ethics, and Justification
246 gap statements mined from War, Ethics, and Justification papers in our 7.9M-paper local library, which holds 3,184 papers on the topic — drawn mostly from each paper's own stated research gap, future-work, challenge and limitation notes, and its abstract. The ones listed below are a selection still marked open; each names the study that raised it, with a DOI link where the paper has one.
Choosing where to publish on War, Ethics, and Justification? See the ranked Social Science journals.
What the literature leaves open
The law cannot function effectively in isolation. The regulatory failures of recent decades have triggered two opposing trends: an increase in formalized, technical regulation, and a renewed search for more human, community-based forms of governance rooted in ethics and religion. The challenge is to develop regulatory systems that are both fair and effective, combining the strengths of each normative order.
Just Peace or Just War? Theological, Ethical and Technological Reflections on Armed Conflict · 2026 · DOIThe paper notes that demoralizing the civilian population was seen as a legitimate objective of military strategy. The paper highlights the challenges of addressing mental health needs in conflict situations. The paper discusses the challenges of evaluating the effectiveness of MHPSS programs.
Future research could explore the effectiveness of the ICRC's MHPSS programs. Future research could examine the impact of mental health on humanitarian workers and organizations.
The gap is the lack of inclusion of noncombatant civilian perspectives in analyses of war. The paper identifies the need to prioritize civilian protection and welfare in just war theory.
It notes the difficulty of balancing the need for critical distance with the need to engage with the lived experience of conflict. The paper also highlights the challenge of avoiding the insularity of combat Gnosticism and the esotericism of contemporary ethics of war scholarship.
The failure of human universalism in the context of war is also a gap that the paper seeks to address.
The prevailing sanguinity in sociological thinking about war has led to a lack of understanding of the social dynamics of war. The dominant perspectives on war in late modernity are limited and require critical examination. There is a need for a new understanding of the role of organised violence in social change.
The paper identifies a gap in the understanding of violent resistance to sexual violence, highlighting the need for a nuanced exploration of its ethical value. The gap is characterized by a lack of consideration for the ethical implications of violent resistance, particularly in the context of sexual violence.
The lack of an adequate account of the moral distinctiveness of terrorism. The need for a clear definition of terrorism that captures its moral significance. The requirement for a nuanced understanding of the features that make terrorism morally distinctive.
It argues that the 'Trolley Problem' tradition has neglected these factors, leading to pernicious real-world consequences. The author claims that a more nuanced approach to ethical thought is necessary.
The lack of attention to Zhuangzian war ethics in the field of just war theory. The limitation of interpreting Mencian and Mohist war ethics through the lens of the Christian tradition of just war theory. The need for a new approach to war ethics that goes beyond the concept of just war.
Rivers and Lakes: Zhuangzi’s Critique of Just War and the Zhuangzian War Ethics and Peace Strategy · 2025 · DOIYet I have argued in the past (initially against Judith Jarvis Thomson, but also against McMahan) that it is insufficient, and misleading, to think about warfare and its moral assessment in merely individualistic terms.
In Section 3 I argue that even if considerations from Section 2 are insufficient to establish that we must dismantle our war‐machines, facts about war which conflict with MSP do establish that we must never use them.
The need for a comprehensive overview of the pre- and post-Civil War Antimasonry. The lack of understanding of the movement's significance and ideology.
The lack of a well-tried model for reducing tensions among antagonistic groups. The need for a comprehensive evaluation of the effectiveness of the approach. The need for further research on the application of the approach in different contexts.
There is a gap in the literature on the landscapes of peace. Prior work has examined the geographical aspects of military conflict, but there is a need for more research on the geographical aspects of peaceful areas.
The paper highlights the need for a deeper understanding of the convergence between pacifist convictions and just-war tenets.
The paper suggests that future research should focus on developing comparative studies of peace movements in various milieus. The study also recommends collaboration with historians abroad to integrate the historical narrative on a global scale.
The article first demonstrated that war is not simply the breakdown of political order but often one of its most organized institutional expressions. Modern warfare depends upon systems of political authority capable of mobilizing economic resources, technological infrastructures, ideological narratives, and institutional legitimacy.
War, Structural Injustice, and Global Political Economy: Rethinking Armed Conflict through a Social Justice Perspective · 2026 · DOIIt notes that the exposure to experience can contaminate, not benefit, our efforts to think ethically about war. The paper argues that bracketing the lived experience of combat from the task of thinking ethically about war risks losing contact with the bloody realities of violent conflict.
This article explores how the United States has moved from a culture of militarism, which was limited to the military values associated with the military, to a more pervasive culture of militarization, with its belief in force and violence as a dominant mediating and structuring force for the whole of social life.
It suggests that prior explanations for religious violence are too simplistic.
The paper aims to explore the influence of Roman law on English common law.
The psychosocial implications attending the lethal extermination of civilians - The failure of an embodied universalism when it is most needed to avert moral…
It draws attention to previously neglected or understudied but crucial aspects of wartime legitimacy, eminently the role of recognition by foreign powers, the rhetoric of the ‘Big Three’ Allies regarding post-war Europe, and the relevance of democratic legitimacy as a powerful antidote to civil conflict during the period of transition into peacetime.
Most-cited papers in War, Ethics, and Justification
- Tracing the threads: How five moral concerns (especially Purity) help explain culture war attitudes · Journal of Research in Personality · 2012 · 513 citations
- Violence and the Word · The Yale Law Journal · 1986 · 434 citations
- What Is Civil War? · Journal of Conflict Resolution · 2004 · 429 citations
- How and when armed conflicts end: Introducing the UCDP Conflict Termination dataset · Journal of Peace Research · 2010 · 420 citations
- Psychological responses to war and atrocity: The limitations of current concepts · Social Science & Medicine · 1995 · 354 citations
- Assuming the Costs of War: Events, Elites, and American Public Support for Military Conflict · The Journal of Politics · 2007 · 326 citations
- A grotesque and dark beauty: How moral identity and mechanisms of moral disengagement influence cognitive and emotional reactions to war · Journal of Experimental Social Psychology · 2006 · 311 citations
- Development Consequences of Armed Conflict · World Development · 2012 · 304 citations
- The Correlates of War Data On War: an Update To 1997 · Conflict Management and Peace Science · 2000 · 295 citations
- Variation in Sexual Violence during War · Politics & Society · 2006 · 287 citations
Most recent work
- Vulnerable (im)mobilities between imperial legacies and colonial logics of war · Mobilities · 2026
- The @peace and America : · 2026
- A Journey of Necessity: Moral Injury in Light of the Divine Comedy · Journal of Religion and Health · 2026
- A civilizational imaginary of Western military technology · Contemporary Security Policy · 2026
- Ethics under Fire: War, Rhetoric, and Moral Reasoning · Journal of Bioethical Inquiry · 2026
- Just Peace or Just War? Theological, Ethical and Technological Reflections on Armed Conflict · Religions · 2026
- Ethics Versus War: Reply to Abbasian and Lucas · Journal of Bioethical Inquiry · 2026
- Between the lines: Naming mental suffering in armed conflict in the ICRC Library · International Review of the Red Cross · 2026
- The theory of just war of modern scholasticism and its relevance for the Baltic states in troubled times · Studies in East European Thought · 2026
- War, Structural Injustice, and Global Political Economy: Rethinking Armed Conflict through a Social Justice Perspective · INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF SOCIAL SCIENCE HUMANITY & MANAGEMENT RESEARCH · 2026
Find a gap in your own War, Ethics, and Justification sub-topic
This page shows what the War, Ethics, and Justification literature already flags as unresolved. To narrow it to your specific question, search the Research Gap Finder: the search is free with a free account and lists the papers closest to your topic first. Unlocking that topic (50 credits, charged once) fills the comparison table from our 7.9M-paper local library and writes the gaps from its rows.
Open the Research Gap Finder →