ABSTRACT
International law has traditionally been seen as concerned with the relations among states rather than among people and with order rather than justice. This chapter discusses the kinds of reasoning and forms of evidence employed in such an interpretation. It considers the main critiques of it, before, finally, advancing a perspective that differs in certain respects from both the progressivist interpretation and its rebuttal, while drawing some inspiration from each. International society, therefore, remains a society of states, but one dominated by states that bear little resemblance to their imperial predecessors. Constant reiteration of good governance doctrines in legal documents gives them a taken-for-granted quality that leads eventually to their institutionalization as basic norms of international society. International law, therefore, remains the law of states associated in a society of states, not of people who are members of some larger community. Complex issues of distributive justice have also been raised in the debates accompanying the emerging environmental regime.
