The Function of Law in the International Community

Can any dispute between states lie beyond the reach of law? Writing in 1933, as the League of Nations faltered, Hersch Lauterpacht argued that it cannot. Against the claim that some quarrels are political and so unfit for judges, he made the case that international law is a complete system, able to settle every dispute put before a court, and that the line between legal and political questions is drawn by the will of states rather than by the nature of law.

This Oxford republication restores a founding text of modern international law, with a new introduction by Martti Koskenniemi on the world that produced it and the long shadow it has cast. For students, scholars and practitioners who want to understand where the field's highest hopes for law over power were first set out with such rigour.