Article in sais review · January 005 doi: 10. 1353/sais. 2005. 0011 citations 49 reads 3,483 authors

Assassination
T
he term “assassination” is not an innocent word. More often than not,
when it is used with respect to a certain act or event, it conveys a nega-
tive value judgment of the related intentions, acts or results, on grounds
of some moral, ethical or legal point of view. Here are a few examples:
When people make the claim that the 1907 Hague Convention IV
banned assassination, they allude to Article 23(b), which prohibits actors
“to kill or wound treacherously individuals belonging to the hostile nation
or army.” Thus, assassination is rendered morally wrong since it involves
unwarranted behavior, namely betrayal of trust. Notice the conceptual and
moral gap between the depiction of an act as one of killing an individual
and a depiction of the same act as one of assassinating that individual.
Whereas the former depiction describes the act itself and involves no judg-
ment of it, the latter depiction describes it as being performed treacherously
and implies a moral evaluation, portraying the act as involving a betrayal
of trust.
Common definitions of the terms “assassination” and “assassinate”
conflate those two dimensions of portrayal. Thus, the Merriam-Webster
Online Dictionary defines “to assassinate” as “to injure or destroy unexpect-
edly and treacherously.”
2
Similarly, Matthew S. Pape defines “assassination”

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as “premeditated and intentional killing of a public figure accomplished
violently and treacherously for a political purpose.”
3
Doubt can be cast on the
portrayal of assassination as an act that is by definition unexpected and vio-
lent, but there is no doubt that a conceptual and moral gap exists between
the properties of being unexpected or violent and the property of being
treacherous. Whereas acknowledgement of one of the former properties to
a certain act leaves ample room for a discussion of whether it was a justi-
fied act, the latter does not.
Definitions of the term “assassination” that include an evaluative
component sometimes are quite explicit. Havens, et al., for example, put
forward a working definition in terms of a “deliberate, extralegal killing of
an individual for political purposes.”
4
Assuming that an act can be extrale-
gal and morally justified, the question is left open whether a certain act of
assassination was morally justified or not, but the normative question of
its legal nature is closed by definition.
Although many definitions of the term “assassination” include an
evaluative component, some do not. According to Robert A. Rowlette, the
definition of the term “assassination” in the United States “certainly has
evolved … to the selective killing of a leader.”
5
Notice the difference between
“killing of a leader” and “murder of a leader.”
6
Whereas depicting an act of
causing the death of a leader as a murder implies that the act was legally
and morally unjustified, depicting it as an act of killing leaves the ques-
tion of justification open. Kevin A. O’Brien defined the term “assassination”
as “the selection and deliberate killing of an individual for political pur-
poses within the confines of conflict or peace.”
7
This definition also does
not include an evaluative component.
It would be unreasonable to discuss moral, ethical or legal aspects of
a certain act that is described as “assassination,” or a policy depicted as “as-
sassination,” without clarifying which notion of “assassination” is being
employed. Consequently, any discussion of Executive Order 12333, which
forbids the United States from conducting acts of assassination despite not
defining that crucial term, is futile as long as it is not preceded by an ap-
propriate definition or adequate clarification of the term. The same holds
for discussions of acts and policies of other states and organizations.
Given such a variety of definitions of the same term, do we have any
reason to prefer one definition to others or at least one type of definition
to another type? Our answer is in the affirmative. There is a reason to pre-
fer using terms that enable us to draw a distinction between a description
of an act, activity or event and an evaluation of it from a certain norma-
tive point of view, to a usage that blurs the distinction between the two.
This preference stems from a principle of the desired ethics of professional
expression. Let us call it the “Principle of the Transparent Nature of Justi-
fication”—when a person makes a statement in one’s capacity as a member
of a certain professional community, it should be clear, from the statement
itself or from the context of utterance, what are the grounds on which one
has made the statement. When we watch a reporter describing an event
under the title “live,” we presume she is telling us what she is watching.

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A
SSASSINATION
AND
P
REVENTIVE
K
ILLING
When we listen to a physician telling us the life expectancy of a certain pa-
tient, we presume he is using data collected by himself and his peers in a
scientifically proper way. When we read a statement of a judge in a verdict,
we presume the judge is in a position to justify the statement on grounds
of appropriate evidence, legal arguments, and an interpretation of the rel-
evant laws.
If the term “assassination” is defined and used in a way that involves
an evaluation, we face a mode of expression that is incompatible with the
Principle of the Transparent Nature of Justification. Under such definition
and usage, when we hear a reporter de-
scribe “an act of assassination,” we do not
know the grounds she has for her evalua-
tion of that act. Even the point of view she
has used for making her evaluation is left
unknown.
On the other hand, if the definition
and usage of the term “assassination” are
kept apart of any evaluation, the descrip-
tion of an act as “an act of assassination”
will leave all the normative questions open.
A person interested in putting forward an
evaluation of the act, in some professional context, will have to portray his
evaluation as such, rather than under the disguise of a simple description,
and will have to specify the point of view he uses, argue for its relevance,
and draw conclusions in a responsible manner.
Appropriate definitions of the term “assassination” do not abound,
and unfortunately there are significant differences between definitions of
the term that are as purely descriptive as possible. Some of the following
aspects are common to all definitions, but some are not:
1. Killing a person;
2. Killing a political leader;
3. Killing a non-combatant;
4. Killing selectively;
5. Killing intentionally;
6. Killing in a premeditated manner;
7. Killing for political (including religious) purposes;
8
8. Killing unexpectedly;
9. Killing by a person not in uniform;
9
10. Killing in a secret and clandestine manner.
10
Some of these ingredients are features of common instances of assas-
sination rather than necessary elements of the concept of assassination. For
instance, since one can imagine an instance of an expected assassination,
item 8 of the list should not be an element of an appropriate definition.
For similar reasons, we discard items 3, 6, 9, and 10.
The second aspect is problematic for two reasons. The following ex-
ample of usage of the term “assassination” will help us to clarify the prob-
lems. Consider the November 2002 case of the targeted killing of four al
When we hear a
reporter describe “an
act of assassination,”
we do not know the
grounds she has for her
evaluation of that act.

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