ABSTRACT
This chapter reviews the role of peoples, states, and individuals and discusses the conception of the legitimation of law in both theories. The comparison of these aspects will show how both approaches even though similar to some respect deal differently with 'outlaw states'. The chapter argues that even though Jurgen Habermas' approach is more convincing in some respects, it neglects, like John Rawls', a perspective that beneath the threshold of military humanitarian intervention may work towards a just global order. In Rawls' ideal theory a peoples is an internally well-ordered society and an externally well-behaved state that respects the law of peoples. Military humanitarian intervention, ideally, should be a police action that regularly is conducted by a global executive power in response to criminal offenses of a despotic government against its own population. Habermas' proposal for a "global domestic politics" offers an ambiguous notion of supranational justice.
