# Contested concept: self-defence

_**What you are reading**: one contested-concept page in Deliberus's deliberation graph. Deliberus maps human reasoning — including claims that are contested, mistaken, or extreme — so that disagreement can be examined precisely. A claim's presence here is not an endorsement: the graph records that someone argued it, how it connects to other reasoning, and how far scrutiny has gotten. The metadata on this page describes the state of that scrutiny, not the truth of the claim._

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- **Contestedness**: criterion
- **Diagnosis**: Both texts thematise this term explicitly, and each supplies a definitional claim that contradicts the other's. The definitional layer is where the debate actually lives.
- **Canonical**: `/concept/self-defence` (data: `/concept/self-defence.json`)

## Senses in use
- **A narrow legal doctrine available to a state against another state's territory, distinct from the ordinary-language notion of defence and unavailable to an occupying power within territory it controls** — used in 4 claim(s)
- **A free-standing primary rule of international law permitting force, triggered by the factual occurrence of an armed attack and exercisable against whoever authored it** — used in 3 claim(s)

## Claims using this term
- [Equating the legal term self-defence with the ordinary notion of defence confuses the legal with the linguistic denotation of the term.](/claim/claim_1279cf5d13ac.md) _(sense: A narrow legal doctrine available to a state against another state's territory, distinct from the ordinary-language notion of defence and unavailable to an occupying power within territory it controls)_
- [Israel can defend itself, but its defensive measures can neither take the form of warfare nor be justified as self-defence in international…](/claim/claim_2ba557193487.md) _(sense: A narrow legal doctrine available to a state against another state's territory, distinct from the ordinary-language notion of defence and unavailable to an occupying power within territory it controls)_
- [The right of self-defence is triggered by a factual occurrence, namely an armed attack.](/claim/claim_758aac461f03.md) _(sense: A free-standing primary rule of international law permitting force, triggered by the factual occurrence of an armed attack and exercisable against whoever authored it)_
- [Self-defence is a free-standing right and a primary rule of international law containing a permission to use force.](/claim/claim_8799362b229f.md) _(sense: A free-standing primary rule of international law permitting force, triggered by the factual occurrence of an armed attack and exercisable against whoever authored it)_
- [In law, self-defence refers to a complex doctrine with a much more restricted scope than ordinary notions of defence, just as negligence do…](/claim/claim_d90b2aa60260.md) _(sense: A narrow legal doctrine available to a state against another state's territory, distinct from the ordinary-language notion of defence and unavailable to an occupying power within territory it controls)_
- [The right of self-defence is exercised against the author of the armed attack, which can be a State or a non-State actor.](/claim/claim_dc889a36fcd2.md) _(sense: A free-standing primary rule of international law permitting force, triggered by the factual occurrence of an armed attack and exercisable against whoever authored it)_
- [In international law self-defence is the legal justification for a state to initiate the use of armed force and to declare war, a body of r…](/claim/claim_f8211999a432.md) _(sense: A narrow legal doctrine available to a state against another state's territory, distinct from the ordinary-language notion of defence and unavailable to an occupying power within territory it controls)_