The Nature and Work of International Law

This open-access chapter introduces public international law for students, teachers, and independent readers. It examines how international law appears in public life; how it constitutes a legal order of its own kind without centralized government; how validity, consent, and compliance shape its normativity; and how natural-law, positivist, realist, institutional, and critical approaches offer competing readings of the same problems. A worked example and a concluding reflection on law after disenchantment complete the chapter. Published freely on thetextbookproject.org, it may be read, downloaded, cited, and assigned in courses under the Creative Commons licence stated on the cover.