Offering a more accessible alternative to casebooks and historical commentaries, Law Among Nations explains issues of international law by tracing the field's development and stressing key principles and processes. This comprehensive text eliminates the need for multiple books by combining discussions of theory and state practice with excerpts from landmark cases. Renowned for its rigorous approach and clear explanations, Law Among Nations remains the gold standard for undergraduate introductions to international law. Learning Goals Trace the development of International Law through key principles and processes. Illustrate important issues and theories using excerpts from landmark cases.

Justice among Nations tells the story of the rise of international law and how it has been formulated, debated, contested, and put into practice from ancient times to the present. Stephen Neff avoids technical jargon as he surveys doctrines from natural law to feminism, and practice from the Warring States of China to the international criminal courts of today. Ancient China produced the first rudimentary set of doctrines. But the cornerstone of international law was laid by the Romans, in the form of universal natural law. However, as medieval European states encountered non-Christian peoples from East Asia to the New World, new legal quandaries arose, and by the seventeenth century the first modern theories of international law were devised.New challenges in the nineteenth century encompassed nationalism, free trade, imperialism, international organizations, and arbitration. Innovative doctrines included liberalism, the nationality school, and solidarism. The twentieth century witnessed the League of Nations and a World Court, but also the rise of socialist and fascist states and the advent of the Cold War. Yet the collapse of the Soviet Union brought little respite. As Neff makes clear, further threats to the rule of law today come from environmental pressures, genocide, and terrorism.

This book narrates the important role that international law has played in America and the crucial if complex story of America's place in promoting and frustrating international law. Based on the stories of key figures in American history and written in an accessible style, it is a must read for anyone interested in America's place in the world.

Offering a new interdisciplinary approach to global justice and integrating the insights of international relations and contemporary ethics, this book asks whether the core norms of international law are just by appraising them according to a standard of global justice grounded in the advancement of peace and protection of human rights.