Comments Elsewhere

Anyonmous2: For this to work, the landlocker’s efforts to defend his concrete barrier/hotel chain/whatever must exceed in severity my violation of his barrier/hotel/whatever. Yet if he were to enter my home by tearing down one of my walls I could order him off at gunpoint, and you wouldn’t consider this to be a “disproportionate” response, correct? If my response defending my house is acceptable, then logically his response defending his hotel/barrier should be acceptable too.

I’m not sure that proportionality is actually the best general solution to right-of-way / landlocking problems (since it seems to me that that leaves the enforcement of right-of-way as an injustice against the landlocker—just an injustice that she cannot justifiably retaliate against). But I don’t think your argument here actually cuts any ice against Roderick’s position. The way that Roderick spells out the principle of proportionality has to do with the “moral seriousness” of the force being used, which is not merely a function of the intensity or “severity” of the physical force being employed on each side. (That’s a very important factor, but it’s only one factor among many.)

So there may be cases where Jones’s use of force is disproportionate but Smith’s use of force, even though the same degree and kind of physical force is being employed on both sides of the conflict. This can happen whenever there is some contextual factor that makes Jones’s use of force more “morally serious” than Smith’s.

Like the difference between (1) shooting someone who is only trying to gain right of way off her landlocked property in order to buy groceries, as vs. (2) shooting someone who is holding your property in a state of siege and has now started tearing down your walls for no apparent purpose other than invading your home. Just to take an example.