This paper contributes to the debate about the principle of the moral equality of combatants by applying the ideas set out in Walzer’s ‘Spheres of Justice’ to the field of war. It uses an interpretivist approach to consider the social meaning of being killed and the risk of being killed in war, and considers the appropriate associated distributive principle. By analysing the institution of remembrance and contrasting the meaning of the death of soldiers with that of contractors it demonstrates that the meaning of death in war is closely bound up with notions of political community. The paper argues that the principle of dessert, based on individual moral culpability as advocated by the revisionists, is not the correct principle for distributing death in war. Instead it argues that war has its own morality and that the appropriate distributive principle is based on obligation to a bounded community making political decisions.
