The Criminal State

Name: The Criminal State
Price: 62.99 AUD
Availability: OutOfStock
ISBN: 9780691180410

War, Atrocity, and the Dream of International Justice

Lawrence Douglas

$62.99

Hardback

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English

Princeton University Press
28 April 2026

Genocide & ethnic cleansing; Geopolitics; Human rights; Civil rights & citizenship; War crimes

A sweeping history of the struggle to hold states to account for their gravest crimes

The Criminal State offers a gripping account of how law has confronted the most radical forms of state violence. Beautifully written, broad in scope, and bracingly original, it weaves history with political thought to trace the shifting legal response to state aggression and atrocities, from Leopold's rule over the Congo to Putin's war in Ukraine.

At its heart is Lawrence Douglas's fresh interpretation of the law's reckoning with Nazi aggression and atrocity. He shows how the Nuremberg trials challenged centuries of thought-rooted in Hobbes and other canonical thinkers-that shielded sovereigns from legal scrutiny. Yet Nuremberg's bid to frame aggression as the cornerstone of a new order of international criminal law largely failed, giving way to a system now centrally concerned with crimes against humanity and genocide-while leaving unresolved the legality and effectiveness of using force to stop the worst violations of human rights.

Providing rare historical perspective on the dilemmas facing international courts, The Criminal State is a sweeping, provocative history of the struggle to bring perpetrators of state violence to justice.

By: Lawrence Douglas
Imprint: Princeton University Press
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions: Height: 235mm, Width: 155mm,
Weight: 898g
ISBN: 9780691180410
ISBN 10: 0691180415
Pages: 456
Publication Date: 28 April 2026
Audience: College/higher education , Professional and scholarly , Primary , Undergraduate
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active

Lawrence Douglas is the James J. Grosfeld Professor of Law, Jurisprudence, and Social Thought at Amherst College and a Guggenheim fellow. His many books include The Right Wrong Man (Princeton) and The Memory of Judgment. His writing has appeared in leading publications such as Harper's, The Wall Street Journal, and The Economist. He is a regular contributor to The Times Literary Supplement and The Guardian.