Introduction

I am attempting to construct a background theory which justifies the list of goods currently accepted as settled in international relations. I considered order-based justifications and utilitarian justifications and found them both wanting. I then turned to rights-based theories which used the notion of contract and found that such theories held promise with regard to the justification of several of the items on the list of settled norms. Most obviously it seemed plausible enough to suppose that a rights-based theory would justify the settled norm referring to democratic institutions within states, the settled norm which required that states be both internally and externally concerned with the protection of human rights, and the settled norm asserting that international law is a good thing. However, I argued that at first glance it seemed rather improbable to suppose that the settled norm referring to the preservation of the system of states and the norm establishing that state sovereignty is a good could be justified by a rights-based background theory. There seemed to be a basic tension between those norms concerned with the preservation of the system of states and sovereignty on the one hand, and those norms related to individual human rights on the other. It seemed that human rights norms were best seen as setting limits to the ambit of the sovereignty-related norms, rather than as justifying those norms.