THE SPECTACLE OF CROWDS cheering the death of a man who had committed unspeakably evil acts probably came as no surprise. Osama bin Laden died with guns blazing in a shoot-out with American soldiers. His acts were reprehensible. Theirs were predictably vengeful, and, despite the cheers, somehow unsatisfying. The least-desirable outcome? A failure to apprehend bin Laden, of course – or more deaths in attempting to do so. The best outcome? Contrition, confession, apprehension, judgement, and the humiliation of lifelong imprisonment. Would such an unlikely result have pleased the crowds? Perhaps not. But then fanatics like bin Laden are incapable of contrition, leaving death, in his case, as the only realistic possibility.

By DAVID ALLEN GREEN [New Statesman] – If one is to take the rule of law and due process seriously, then it is at the margins where they matter most: where the victim is deemed to “deserve it”. If the rule of law and due process are posited as absolutes, then ordering such a killing is necessarily wrong at all times and in all circumstances.

Alternatively, if the rule of law and due process only have a qualified status, and so (somehow) can be disregarded in exceptional situations, then the difficult question is where one draws the line.

And, in terms of international affairs, it also becomes unclear exactly what are the values and norms which the West are seeking to defend when an assassination or “exection” [sic] is ordered: it is rather absurd to defend the rule of law and due process by undermining them.

The death of Osama Bin Laden is undoubtedly a welcome event, even if it was perhaps an unlawful one. There is a sense that it was a just outcome, even if there had not been any due process. Nonetheless, if the death was unlawfully ordered, there remains at least the conceptual and ethical problem…

But it is not a problem which many of us will lose sleep over tonight.

Continued at the New Statesman | More Chronicle & Notices.