This book focuses on just war and on humanitarian intervention, both of them controversial themes yesterday as well as today. The study covers the following:

1. International ethics and norms: irrelevant or indispensable? Revisiting a persisting debate.
2. The just war doctrine from Antiquity until today, with emphasis on Aristotle, Cicero, Augustine, Aquinas, Vitoria, Gentili, Suarez and Grotius, concluding with Michael Walzer.
3. Intervention and the non-intervention norm: an overview from the 18th century until today.
4. The roots of humanitarian intervention: just war against tyranny, with emphasis on Vitoria, Gentili, Suarez, Grotius, the monarchomachs, Bodin and Vattel.
5. Humanitarian intervention in international law: a hundred years debate (1830-1939).
6. Intervention and non-intervention in international political theory during the long 19th century: Kant, Hegel, Cobden, Mazzini and J.S. Mill.
7. Humanitarian interventions in the course of the 19th century: the Greek case (1821-1831), the Lebanon-Syria case (1860-1861) and the Bulgarian case (1876-1878).
8. Humanitarian intervention cases during the Cold War.
9. Humanitarian intervention cases in the post-Cold War era (1990-today).
10. The contemporary humanitarian intervention debate: the dilemmas involved; the search for the appropriate reaction at UN level; and the key issues, according to its advocates, on how to proceed with humanitarian intervention if the need arises.