The Internationalists

And Their Plan to Outlaw War

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Summary

'It will change the way you remember the 20th century and read the news in the 21st' Steven Pinker

'A clarion call to preserve law and order across our planet' Philippe Sands

'A fascinating and important book ... given the state of the world, The Internationalists has come along at the right moment' Margaret MacMillan, Financial Times

Since the end of the Second World War, we have 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. Nations that wage aggressive war have become outcasts and have almost always had to give up their territorial gains. 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.

'Sweeping and yet personable at the same time, The Internationalists explores the profound implications of the outlawry of war. Professors Oona Hathaway and Scott Shapiro enrich their analysis with vignettes of the many individuals (some unknown to most students of History) who played such important roles in this story. None have put it all together in the way that Hathaway and Shapiro have done in this book' Paul Kennedy

Reviews

Genuine originality is unusual in political history. The Internationalists is an original book.
Louis Menand, New Yorker

About the authors

Oona Hathaway

Oona A. Hathaway is the Gerard C. and Bernice Latrobe Smith 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 U.S. Department of Defense. She earned her BA from Harvard College and a JD from Yale Law School, where she was Editor-in-Chief of The Yale Law Journal.

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Scott Shapiro

Scott J. Shapiro is the Charles F. Southmayd Professor of Law and Professor of Philosophy at Yale Law School, where he is the Director of the Centre for Law and Philosophy and the CyberSecurity Lab. He is also the Visiting Quain Professor of Jurisprudence at University College, London. He is the author of Legality and editor of The Oxford Handbook of Jurisprudence and the Philosophy of Law, and the co-author, with Oona Hathaway, of The Internationalists: How a Radical Plan to Outlaw War Remade the World.