POLSC402: Global Justice

Read this article, which is meant to give an idea of the field called legal positivism, which can roughly be described as the idea (contrary to natural law theories among others) that the conditions of legal validity are purely a matter of social facts and are not a matter of morality. Green makes frequent reference to H.L.A. Hart, a prominent legal scholar. In his seminal work The Concept of Law, Hart makes the argument that regardless of the lack of an organized authority to implement international law, international law still has relevance over behavior in establishing international norms and rule-following.