ABSTRACT
A cultural shift that eroded the legitimacy of sovereigns would necessarily touch war as well. There are good grounds for thinking that such a cultural shift is under way in many Western countries. It reflects the rise of a new way of talking the appeal to 'human rights' that cannot be combined with an appeal to sovereignty on what is usually described as the Westphalian model. This chapter considers John Rawls against the background of the much lengthier history of ideas of sovereignty. It discusses three different ways that broadly liberal writers have fitted sovereignty into their thinking: a more or less unqualified acceptance of an international order that makes aggressive war inevitable, exemplified by Emerich de Vattel, Immanuel Kant and John Stuart Mill. The chapter presents the gradual re-emergence of a more moralistic account of waging war that has been shaped, in recent years, by talk of 'human rights'; and the last describes the thought of Rawls himself.
