The Internationalists: And Their Plan to Outlaw War

(Paperback)

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A timely and fascinating history of how law rather than war became the norm in settling disputes between nations Since the end of the Second World War, the world has moved from an international system in which war was legal, and accepted as the ultimate arbiter of disputes between nations, to one in which it was not. How did this epochal transformation come about This remarkable book, which combines political, legal and intellectual history, traces the origins and course of one of the great shifts in the modern world. The pivot of The Internationalists is the Paris Peace Pact of 1928. Spurred by memories of the First World War and driven by the idealism of a small number of statesmen and thinkers, virtually every nation renounced war as a means of international policy. Eleven years later, on the outbreak of the Second World War, the Pact looked like an embarrassing lapse in the serious business of international affairs. That is how historians have seen it ever since. Hathaway and Shapiro show, however, that the Pact shaped a new world order.

Reviews

Genuine originality is unusual in political history. The Internationalists is an original book. -- Louis Menand * New Yorker *
An impassioned history of how the liberal international order came into being and why it must be defended as never before * Economist *
The Internationalists is a fascinating and challenging book, which raises gravely important issues for the present. -- Margaret MacMillan * Financial Times *
An extraordinary high-wire act ... this book is a lively firecracker that illuminates not only the past, but also the present -- Adam Roberts * Telegraph *

Author Bio

Oona A. Hathaway is Professor of International Law and Professor of Political Science at Yale Law School, where she is the Director of the Center for Global Legal Challenges. In 2014-2015, she served as Special Counsel to the General Counsel for National Security Law at the Department of Defense. Scott J. Shapiro is Professor of Law and Professor of Philosophy at Yale Law School, where he is the Director of the Centre for Law and Philosophy. He is the author of Legality and editor of The Oxford Handbook of Jurisprudence and the Philosophy of Law.