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An enigmatic epigram welcomes the reader of Carlo Focarelli's book: "[w]hat is a mountain for? For the moon to set behind" (at lv). Poetic images not infrequently hint at hidden meanings; in this case, however, the enigma stems from the fact that the phrase, although appearing between quotation marks, is not credited to anyone (which is strange for a heavily footnoted book whose name index includes more than 1,000 entries). Since a Google search takes the reader straight back to the book under review and nowhere else, the temptation to assume that the anonymous poet was the author himself has been strong (and maybe imputable to the advent of EJIL's "Last Page"). I resisted this impulse for fear of appearing too unlearned ("other readers will surely have recognized the author", I said to myself) to be considered fit to review the immensely erudite book that Focarelli's International Law as Social Contract indisputably is. Turning a blind eye to the epigraph would have been an easy way out; I chose to ask the author. He was kind enough to reveal to me that the phrase is an abridged version of a dialogue between the famous Swiss psychologist (and polymath) Jean Piaget, asking questions about the Salève, a mountain also known as the Balcon de Genève, and a seven-year-old boy named Rou: "The Salève was made" by men. - Why? - It couldn't make itself all alone. - What is it for? - For the moon. - Why? - For it to set behind"".1 Enquiring about the meaning of the epigraph turned out to be a serendipitous choice.
The author of International Law as Social Construct is fond of definitions. Drawing from Thomas Aquinas, Pico della Mirandola, Kant, Comte, and von Humboldt, he tries
