Introduction

The international state system has lately undergone a huge development having to meet great changes and challenges. Two world wars in less than 50 years, in particular the cruelties of World War II and their dimensions, gave impetus to quick and enormous changes: the development of an extensive human rights regime, normative limitations to the legitimacy of warfare and the establishment of the United Nations (Martin and Reidy 2006, 3). The decline of colonialism and the end of the Cold War reshaped the international state system and power schemes. Globalization brought the world closer together, establishing new ways of communication and cooperation, but also new dangers and challenges, calling into question the autonomy of states or even their raison d’être. ‘One of the greatest challenges posed by this new international order has been that of providing appropriate standards of justice for this emerging system’ (Martin and Reidy 2006, 3). John Rawls contributed to this search, in 1993 with his Amnesty Lecture and then in 1999 with the homonymous monograph The Law of Peoples (LP).