Michael Walzer has an article titled Killing Tyrants . He argues that the killing of the tyrant should be the last legal act of the tyrant's legal system before it is replaced by a more moral one. This is an argument for the ritualised killing of a tyrant in order to symbolically end the tyrant's reign. This is morally repugnant.

Walzer's view of tyranny is cast in a comic book style.

Assassinating a tyrant poses no moral problems. Here is a ruler fully empowered and actively engaged, right now, in the oppression of his subjects: his prisons are crowded, his torturers are at work, his death squads roam the country, his tax collectors are extortionate.

He is at war with his subjects - actually, not

metaphorically - and killing him is a legitimate act of war. Tyrannicide is an honorable killing, and the killers are commonly honored.

Under republicanism, tyranny is not so simple a definition and can include all manner of arbitrary government. Tyranny does not need to be absolute to be destructive. It only needs to be insidious, and the two main insidious forms in modern democracy are arbitrary government and the state of emergency.

Walzer's view of tyrannicide, would enable the killing of politicians who are, or have practiced arbitrary government or a state of emergency without the the fear of being charged with homicide.

Walzer's comic book view of a tyrant, would fit the popular impression of a Hitler, a Stalin or a Hussein. But Hitler and Stalin both operated in state's of exception, which removed the political embodiment of an individual, to just its biological form. We commonly call these camps.

In a camp the force of law does reach, but through executive whim, is decided not to be applied. Consequently, if an individual in the camp dies, it is not homicide, as that individual is outside of legal retribution courtesy of the individual having no political life, and the force of law not covering them through executive whim - or tyranny.

The problem for Walzer's stand on tyrannicide is that Australia and America have both produced camps in the last decade. America at Guantanamo and Australia at Nauru, PNG and Christmas Island. Killing a tyrant for being a tyrant is morally repugnant; for the republican a morally just manner must be found to bring them to justice for their crimes against humanity and decency.

Walzer tries to determine of killing a tyrant is just if they have been captured. He asks himself:

But now imagine the same tyrant overthrown: he is a prisoner of war; he cannot simply be killed. Shouldn't he be brought to trial for his crimes and, if convicted, punished in a just and humane way? He is powerless now, locked up, in prison garb - why should we treat him differently than we believe all prisoners should be treated?

Walzer states that a tyrant must be treated differently as his crime is not just against individuals, but against the community, the commonwealth and the idea of political community. Consequently Walzer says he is not an 'ordinary criminal'.

As a result he argues that the tyrant should be treated as an exception, and instead of being tried under the rule of law, the tyrants state of exception should continued until the tyrant can be dealt with under a tyrannical legal system and killed as a full stop.

The tyrant's death becomes a ritualised end to the arbitrary legal system of the tyrant. Walzer writes:

A tyrannical state is always in the killing business, so perhaps a state that is out of the killing business cannot be tyrannical. If that is right, then the execution of a tyrant should be the last execution.

Killing through the rule of law in a republican and liberal democratic system is morally repugnant. Killing a tyrant, rather than subjecting them to the full force of law, remains morally repugnant.

The only method that Walzer's killing of a tyrant can be maintained in a republican system is by establishing, or perpetuating, a state of exception until the tyrant is killed. But by definition this means that it is only possible under arbitrary government, and cannot be republican, liberal, democratic or non-arbitrary.

It is impossible to kill a captured tyrant under the rule of law unless a state of emergency is established to achieve that end. An emergency is by definition arbitrary executive government and an insidious form of tyranny. It cannot be supported morally or politically by Australian republicanism.

The most famous tyrannicide in history is the killing of Caesar in the Senate at the hands of Marcus Brutus. Basically it is the killing of a tyrant in the name of the public good and to restore the democratic (or oligarchic) mores of state.

Most legal systems are premised upon the state having a monopoly on violence. Where any private violence is subject to the review of the state to determine its validity. Tyrannicide is outside of that system. It is based on the assumption that the state is no longer valid, usurped by the tyrant, and consequently tyrannicide is legitimate private violence against the tyrant. Lintott writes of Cicero's view on tyrannicide:

For us the disquieting features of this view are first the idea that a tyrant has no rights at all and no claim to justice, and secondly the extension of the principle to quasi-tyrants.

The quasi-tyrant in Cicero's view was a demagogue who had a 'lasting hold on the populace' even if the demagogue had not used violence or force. The other side of Cicero's view of quasi-tyranny was the use of limited violence outside of the state legal system in order to save and restore the state - in other words a classic state of exception.

There were legal positions in the Roman state, such as the Dictator, which existed in states of exception, so such principles were not unknown to the Roman system. It is unsurprising as Roman magistracy was a state based form of pater-familias and absolute power. Lintott continues:

Tyrannicide is therefore a permissible form of private violence (like that employed in defense of a tribune or against a thief) whose justification lies not only in political philosophy but in a specific legal provisio.

Cicero's view of tyrannicide is expansive and enables the defense of the senatorial and equestrian order's power from the plebians and their demagogic populaire leaders. Consequently private violence can be used to maintain the status quo of state; whether in the death of a dictator-for-life tyrant like Caesar or populists like the Gracchi.

This brings the use of private violence into the domain of politics. And like the state of exception becomes the line where politics and the judicial intersect. The use of violence for justice and redress becomes purely political.