The Law of Peoples

By the "Law of Peoples" I mean a particular political conception of right and justice that applies to the principles and norms of international law and practice.

— The Law of Peoples

This monograph on the Law of Peoples is neither a treatise nor a textbook on international law. Rather, it is a work that focuses strictly on certain questions connected with whether a realistic Utopia is possible, and the conditions under which it might obtain. I begin and end with the idea of a realistic Utopia.

— The Law of Peoples

Political philosophy is realistically Utopian when it extends what are ordinarily thought of as the limits of practical political possibility. Our hope for the future of our society rests on the belief that the nature of the social world allows reasonably just constitutional democratic societies existing as members of the Society of Peoples.

— The Law of Peoples

The basic idea is to follow Kant's lead as sketched by him in Perpetual Peace (1795) and his idea of foedus pacificum. I interpret this idea to mean that we are to begin with the social contract idea of the liberal political conception of a constitutionally democratic regime and then extend it by introducing a second original position at the second level, so to speak, in which the representatives of liberal peoples make an agreement with other liberal peoples

— The Law of Peoples