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Legal Rules and International Society. By AC Ared [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999, ISBN0–19–512711–0. 220pp. £14.99. Pbk].

The interface between international law and international relations has achieved increasing popularity as an area for writing and research or as ‘a growing dialogue’ as the author himself terms it (6). In a sense, it is a dangerous game in that, because a particular author involved will normally have been schooled in only one of the disciplines, rather than in both, there is the likelihood that what that person writes about the ‘other’ area may well appear trite to scholars of that other discipline. As a consequence, there are many who abstain from the dialogue, hoping to be able to survive and even prosper without troubling too much about the content, structure and methodologies of the alien discipline. In my own case, I have to admit that my adoption of the latter course was largely because of a fear of superficiality in canvassing issues relevant to the ‘real’ world! 1 Fortunately, Professor Arend seems to have felt no such inhibitions and has managed, within less than 200 pages, to do substantial justice to a variety of theories operating within the two disciplines. The author is rightly critical of the lack of attention paid to details of state practice in many analyses of the existence and content of rules of international law. As he writes (p. 7):