ABSTRACT
Richard Price, one of the key figures in norms constructivism, raises the issue of the ethical limits of international norms. Price's 'Moral Limit and Possibility in World Politics' offers a trenchant defense of 'norms constructivism'. He argues that constructivists are well placed to adjudicate the limits and possibilities of moral change, including addressing important moral dilemmas. Against skeptics and skepticism, Price embraces 'progressive moral change'. While their dark assessment of Nuremberg recognizes the 'significant humanitarian accomplishments that Price demands critics acknowledge', Normand and Jochnick can offer only a negative reading of norms' impacts on the execution of the 1991 Iraq war. Price wants to establish ethics as central to empirical inquiry. To do so, he turns to Mervyn Frost's exploration of the constitutive role of moral ideas in the international system. However, Price argues that other accounts of the institutional underpinnings of modern ethical life are possible, though his account narrows the ethical vision.
