Introduction: What is uncertainty?

This is an unusual book. Its unusual features may be able to provide a different insight into the study of international law, but they do require an explanation. How scholars conceive of what they are doing is fundamental for their work: it is their approach. The Pure Theory of Law makes a distinctly modernist claim to applying scientific methodology to law. This is the notion that what we do is a legal science in some proper sense of the word, what for the German language is Rechtswissenschaft. The approach also determines the relationship to other theories of ‘what lawyers do’,2 more so than differences in substance.