International lawyers have often been interested in the link between their discipline and the foundational issues of jurisprudential method, but little that is systematic has been written on this subject. This book - now in paperback - fills the gap by focusing on the issues of concept-formation in legal science, as well as looking at their application to the specific concerns of international law. In responding to these issues, the book argues that public international law seeks to establish and institutionalize a system of authoritative judgment whereby the conditions by which a community...

What role does reason play in determining what, if anything, is morally right? What role does morality play in law? Perhaps the most controversial answer to these fundamental questions is that reason supports a supreme principle of both morality and legality. The contributors to this book cast a fresh critical eye over the coherence of modern approaches to ethical rationalism within law, and reflect on the intellectual history on which it builds. The contributors then take the debate beyond the traditional concerns of legal theory into areas such as the relationship between morality and...