Thrasymmachos revisited: On the relevance of norms and the study of law for international relations

The place of norms in political life has always been controversial, probably because of their counter-factual validity. The possibility of violating norms has made the explanation and prediction of human action in terms of norms particularly difficult.1 Thus the search for causes of human behaviour has been concerned mainly with the discovery of less problematic factors that could be imputed as constants in explaining particular decisions.