The Internationalists: How a Radical Plan to Outlaw War Remade the World

To understand international law, one must understand war. And to understand war, one must understand history. The authors of this book, Oona A Hathaway and Scott J Shapiro, are professors at Yale University, in international law and philosophy, respectively. The book looks at international law through the twin lenses of war and history, by analysing the effects of a specific event in the history of international law: the 1928 General Treaty for Renunciation of War as an Instrument of National Policy, colloquially also known as the Paris Peace Pact or the Kellogg–Briand Pact. The basic premise of the book is that the pact was a seminal and transformative event in world history as the first modern instrument to outlaw war. While it may not have ended armed conflict, scepticism about its effect is misguided: today war is the departure from the norm, and interstate warfare is exceptional, and is no longer accepted as an instrument of policy. Unashamedly proceeding from the liberal-internationalist paradigm, the book traces the development of the idea to outlaw war through three stages: from an Old World Order reflecting the legal regime adopted by European states in the 17th century; through a period of transformation between the two world wars; to a New World Order, built on the foundations of the pact and embedded in the post-Second World War international institutions and patterns of cooperation. These developments are traced through key moments over four centuries, distinguishing the ideas and work of two opposing groups of scholars and practitioners of international law. On the one hand, the interventionists considered war as a legitimate instrument by which to enforce the state’s rights in the absence of a central governing authority; on the other, the internationalists wanted to outlaw war and have disputes settled by international mechanisms. The book juxtaposes the views of the two main exponents of the respective schools of ideas: 17th century Dutch international lawyer Hugo de Groot (Grotius) and influential 20th century British academic Hersch Lauterpacht. The analysis of De Groot’s work leads the authors to the somewhat controversial conclusion that he laid the intellectual foundations for a legal order based on war. This contrasts with the conventional view that De Groot is the ‘father of international law’, who in his writings accepted the inevitability of war at the time but aimed to regulate its devastating effects. Reflecting this point International Law