This timely collective work addresses the important question of what role international law plays in post-conflict reconstruction. It grew out of a 2007 workshop titled: ‘Empire or Empowerment? The Role of International Law in Building Democracy and Justice after Conflict’ that drew together a group of scholars and practitioners (p 1). The overall message of the book is that international law has both potential and limits in State-building.

Drawing a colonial analogy to State-building, the first three essays by Outi Korhonen, Nehal Bhuta, and Peter Danchin offer a provocative beginning. While Korhonen and Bhuta interrogate the assumption that the West can use a ready-made tool kit to sculpt foreign societies, Korhonen—who finds State-building a ‘classic assertion of hegemony and empire’ (p 36)—is more hopeful of its emancipatory potential via its pursuit under ‘culturally specific conditions’ (pp 36–37). Focusing on Iraq, Danchin argues that international law has both aided in the imposition of a supposedly universal body of international human rights norms on a resistant political order, and also, conversely, created a formal space allowing discussion and contestation of that project (pp 64–65, 88–89).

Focusing on the international community's uptake of, and implementation of democracy, Hilary Charlesworth and Brett Bowden rightly spotlight this enterprise's limits, including its checklist approach to self-government that blocks organic development (Chapter 4, p 110). Overall, their analysis would have benefited from including in its coverage UN constitutional assistance, a distinct democracy-defining/promoting activity that entails standard-setting-and-implementation as to how a constitution should be written and what it should broadly contain.Footnote ¹ The implementation of democracy in Afghanistan is William Maley's theme (Chapter 5) wherein he underscores the centrality of legitimacy to democracy and the need for a ‘wider web of legitimizing norms’ other than elections to sustain democracy (p 132). Arguing that international law can only reinforce and not also generate such legitimizing norms, he calls for understanding democracy-promotion as primarily a long term and indigenous process (pp 132–133).

How has the UN fared in its attempts to construct a [post-conflict] rule of law? Jeremy Farrall (Chapter 6) and Laura Grenfell (Chapter 7) address this question by focusing on Haiti and Liberia and East-Timor respectively. Farrall calls for greater emphasis on mechanisms that are more suitable to local conditions (p 156). Faulting the UN for ignoring the potential of customary law and prioritizing the use of international law in building East-Timor's legal system (pp 158, 176), Grenfell argues for a more strategic use of international law, coupling it with (local) customary law, an enterprise that might result in a greater public reliance on the legal system (p. 176).

Focusing on treaty-ratification—a typically-envisaged post-conflict reconstruction ‘outcome,’—Helen Durham argues that the ratification of international humanitarian law—whose subject matter resonates with post-conflict communities' experiences (p 190)—allows post-conflict States to reshape their policies and structures in tune with international principles and link the ‘local and the global’ (p 179). But she cautions that since making local–global connections are not so simple, internationals should reconsider the opportunities ratification offers (p 196–197) and international law must consider ‘engaging creatively with the communities it claims to protect’ (p 197).

Amy Maguire inquires into the role of international law in protecting women's security after conflict to underscore that the encouragement of women's participation in security law and policy-making is insufficient (Chapter 10). Drawing upon interviews with women of post-conflict societies, she advocates a ‘gendered security’ legal intervention so that women can articulate their experiences of insecurity in the broadest senses and make laws that will erase the legal silences (pp 242–243). Is the purpose of international criminal law in post-conflict States to punish individual wrongdoers or to promote reconciliation? That uncertainty still hovers around this issue in the Great Lakes region of Africa is well brought out by Phil Clark (Chapter 11). Clark argues that in its drive to punish genocidaires without engaging properly with Rwandans through outreach programs, the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda may have missed opportunities to promote reconciliation beyond simply combating impunity (pp 245, 256–259).

Should State-builders themselves be made accountable when their actions violate human rights? Writing on this theme, Annemarie Devereux argues that international law limits the UN's human rights accountability and therefore proposes mechanisms such as a UN Human Rights Complaints Body (pp 216–217). Compared with the overall tone of some of the other contributors, John Braithwate embraces a more optimistic picture of international law (Concluding Chapter). He envisages a humble role for it in State-building which he views not as a top-down process but as a complex ‘weaving activity of network of actors’ (p 286).

What role international law plays in State-building is a complex question that does not admit of simple answers. Furthermore, its answer hinges on who it is posed to. By presenting a range of perspectives, and even conflicting views, this book appropriately portrays this theme in its complexity and fosters understanding and debate about it. Therein lie its strengths.