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Although portrayed as a liberal law of co-existence of and co-operation between states, international law has always been a welfarist law, too. Emerging in eighteenth-century Europe, it soon won favour globally. Not only did it minister to the interests of states and their concern for stability, but it was also an interventionist law designed to ensure the happiness and well-being of peoples. Hence international law initially served as a secularised eschatological model, replacing the role of religion in ensuring the proper ordering of mankind, which was held to be both one and divided. That initial vision still drives our post-Cold War globalised world. Contemporary international law is neither a strictly welfarist law nor a strictly liberal law, but is in fact a liberal-welfarist law. In the conjunction of these two purposes lies one of the keys to its meaning and a partial explanation for its continuing ambivalence.

Helps readers form a view of what the purpose of international law was, is, and could and should be
New take on international law demonstrates the blind spot of standard accounts
Written by a leading French scholar



Table of Contents

Introduction
Part I. The Modern Law of Nations:
1. The law of nations of the Moderns: a new discipline
2. The liberal purpose of the modern law of nations: liberty, equality and security for states
3. State interests and self-esteem
4. The modern law of nations between free-enterprise and protectionism
5. The welfarist purpose of the modern law of nations: the happiness of the people and the advancement of states
6. Cooperation and assistance to states between liberalism and welfarism
7. The liberal-welfarist law of nations: a code of good conduct to discipline European states
8. Goodness, freedom and justice
Conclusion
Part II. Classical International Law:
9. A modern commentator turned classical: the Vattelian moment
10. The triumph of the liberal purpose of international law
11. Liberal international law outflanked. A welfarist purpose for the rest of the world
12. Intellectual and political explanations and justifications for the change
13. Classical international law in the age of free-enterprise: between free-trade and protectionism
14. Liberal vision, dogmatic foundation and the appeal of liberalism
15. Concerns about social and economic inequality. The emergence of a new welfarist purpose
16. The emergence of concerns for human rights
Conclusion
Part III. Contemporary International Law:
17. Continuities and discontinuities of the classical model
18. The two liberal purposes of contemporary international law
19. The dilemmas of the new liberal purpose (I): democracy, human rights and the rule of law
20. The dilemmas of the new liberal purpose (II): humanitarian interventions, identities and cultures
21. The status report and general prospects for the new liberal and democratic purpose
22. The economic liberalism of contemporary international law: between Keynesian objectives and the triumph of free trade
23. The general advancement of the welfarist purpose: characteristics and difficulties
24. The specific advancement of the welfarist purpose: Third World(s) and development
Conclusion.