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Does international law have an answer to the question: "what is a fair international society"? In her insightful book, Emmanuelle Tourne-Jouannet interrogates in a systematic fashion diverse areas of international law that touch upon or address, directly or indirectly, fairness, equity, or redistribution: from the law of development to minority rights to international economic law. By taking positive law as the point of departure for an inquiry about global justice, Tourme-Jouannet departs, in a refreshing way, from attempts to extrapolate from mainstream legal theory an abstract conception of global justice. "[W]hat is to be addressed here are not contemporary theories of justice and the philosophical questions that the topic raises �. [I]t is the aim to address them here from a different angle: from within legal practice, as it were ... I have opted for an approach based on existing legal practice, with a view to conceptualizing and questioning it�"(at 3). For Tourme-Jouannet, the question about the fairness of international legal practice leads to a number of other legal-historical questions regarding the contemporary evolution of international law. The project is "simply to begin by identifying the principles and legal practices relating to development and recognition" (ibid.). In her view, adopting a historical perspective, these practices - notwithstanding their differences - reflect a joint concern with achieving global justice over the years.
In What is a Fair International Society?, Tourme-Jouannet reviews the history of international economic law over the last decades. She disaggregates it into two strands of international law - "�the law of development" and the "law of recognition", which are inextricably enmeshed in today's world that is "postcolonial and post-Cold War". In her view, "[t]hese twin characteristics explain why international society is also riddled with the two major forms of injustice that ... afflict national societies"
