Cover -- Half-title -- Series-title -- Title -- Copyright -- Contents -- Foreword -- Preface -- Acknowledgements -- Abbreviations -- Part I Introduction -- 1 Great Powers and outlaw states -- Part II Concepts -- 2 Sovereign equalities -- Introduction -- Orthodoxies -- Historical and philosophical roots -- Reconceptualising sovereign equality -- Formal equality -- Legislative equality -- Existential equality -- Tolerated inequalities -- 3 Legalised hierarchies -- Introduction -- Hierarchy and anarchy -- Legalised hegemony: the Great Powers in concert -- Liberal anti-pluralism -- Other hierarchies -- Conclusion -- Part III Histories: Great Powers -- 4 Legalised hegemony: from Congress to Conference 1815-1906 -- Introduction -- The Congress of Vienna and the inception of legalised hegemony -- The Congress of Vienna: a brief account -- Hegemony and hierarchy at Vienna -- Legalised hegemony -- Sovereign equality in the service of legalised hegemony -- Other hierarchies -- Conclusion -- International legal scholarship: fidelity, repudiation and equivocation -- Fidelity -- Repudiation -- Equivocation -- Towards the Hague Peace Conferences -- 5 'Extreme equality': Rupture at the Second Hague Peace Conference 1907 -- Introduction -- Rui Barbosa and James Brown Scott -- Hegemony revived -- Versailles -- From Vienna to Versailles: some preliminary conclusions -- 6 The Great Powers, sovereign equality and the making of the United Nations Charter: San Francisco 1945 -- Introduction -- Going to San Francisco -- At the Fairmont Hotel -- The push for hegemony -- The pull of equality -- At San Francisco -- Attenuating the veto -- Modifying the membership -- Constraining the Council -- Enhancing the Assembly -- Equality and hegemony revisited -- 7 Holy Alliances: Verona 1822 and Kosovo 1999 -- Introduction -- Two theses about the Nato action in Kosovo.

The Verona thesis -- The Vienna thesis -- Conclusion -- Part IV Histories: Outlaw States -- 8 Unequal sovereigns: 1815-1939 -- Introduction -- International society: two conceptions -- Unequal sovereigns -- Introduction -- The publicists of anti-pluralism -- Practices of anti-pluralism: capitulations and unequal treaties -- The practices of anti-pluralism: intervention and the Holy Alliance -- 9 Peace-loving nations: 1945 -- Introduction -- The turn of the century -- Versailles -- San Francisco -- 10 Outlaw states: 1999 -- Introduction: the shift to anti-pluralism -- Regimes of anti-pluralism -- Criminal states -- The democratic governance regime -- Conclusion: a bifurcated legal order -- Part V Conclusion -- 11 Arguing about Afghanistan: Great Powers and outlaw states redux -- Introduction: juridical sovereignty and the war in Afghanistan -- Hegemons -- Outlaws -- Unequal sovereigns I: legalised hegemony modified -- Lawful violence: pragmatists -- Unlawful violence -- Legalised hegemony revisited -- Unequal sovereigns in the Afghanistan war: out of law -- Conclusion -- 12 The puzzle of sovereignty -- Select bibliography -- Index.