Document Type
Book Review
Publication Date
2015
Publication Information
68 Rev. Metaphysics 671 (2015) (book review).
Abstract
NEFF, Stephen C. Justice Among Nations: A History of International Law. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2014. 628 pp. Cloth, $45.00.
This magisterial work is not a "history of international law" in the most conventional senses of the term. The author is not concerned to identify the origins or to trace the rise and fall of specific norms of international law. Nor does he provide a history of institutions which traverse national borders. This is not a book about globe-rattling events, such as world wars, era-defining treaties (Westphalia, Versailles), or the comings and goings of great men (Caesar, Churchill). It is not about the practice of international lawyers.
Neff seeks instead to answer the following question: how has it come to be that there is such a thing as international law at all? He sets out to describe, more specifically, the general nature and character of international law; how it was made, interpreted, and applied; and why it has taken the course that in fact it has taken. Neff opines that "international law [itself] is not so much a list of rules, as a response to the challenge of devising answers" to these questions.
Recommended Citation
Gerard V. Bradley,
Justice Among Nations: A History of International Law,
68 Rev. Metaphysics 671 (2015) (book review)..
Available at:
https://scholarship.law.nd.edu/law_faculty_scholarship/1861