This book brings together world experts on the United Nations and international law, to examine not only the content of that legal regime but how it has been transformed since the second half of the twentieth century.

This book offers the first exploration of the deployment of international law for the legitimization of U.S. ascendancy as an informal empire in Latin America. This book explores the intellectual history of a distinctive idea of American international law in the Americas, focusing principally on the evolution of the American Institute of International Law (AIIL).