Justice, the State and International Relations

Justice, the State and International Relations offers a review of historical traditions of international ethical and political theory in the light of modern developments in political philosophy. McCarthy provides a defence of natural law tradition, and, in response to the criticism of natural law that, along with Kantianism, it is too abstract to produce a substantive account of justice and rights, constructs an argument for basic, agency-grounded rights. Through his study, the author attacks `realism' and the modern `cosmopolitan' theories that until now have been too little debated.