ABSTRACT
When John Rawls first published his essay entitled “The Law of Peoples,” many of his liberal admirers were confused by his argument that liberalism, no matter how broadly defined, cannot be the general and comprehensive worldview for the law of peoples and more sweeping proposals for global justice. His commitment to the history of political philosophy always led him to insist that there were many liberalisms, not just one that was the true way of liberalism. But both in the essay and the revised monograph, The Law of Peoples, that followed, he goes beyond the claim that there is a plurality of liberalisms to insist that a law of peoples must not be based in liberal principles; otherwise, it would be much too narrow and deny equal standing before such a law to many of the world’s peoples who do not live in liberal societies.1
