My experience of international relations and diplomacy inspired what would become the central focus of my research writing. I published Eunomia, New Order for a New World (OUP; 1990/2001; Japanese and Chinese translations published in 2007 and 2013); The Health of Nations. Society and Law Beyond the State (CUP; 2002) – awarded a Certificate of Excellence by the American Society of International Law which described it as ‘a work of great distinction’; and, most recently, Eutopia. New Philosophy and New Law for a Troubled World (Edward Elgar; 2016).

My proposed new conception of a universal international society is based on a social philosophy of my own making, called Social Idealism, which is a form of idealist philosophy in the Platonic tradition. The idea of the world as a collection of states was developed in the writings of Emmerich de Vattel in the late 18^th century, negating ideas inherited from ancient Greece and Rome and the Italian Renaissance which had supposed a universal society. His ideas were welcomed and promoted by the newly emerging nation-states of the 19^th century. Today we are much more aware of the existential challenges facing all-humanity to which we must respond collectively.

The main focus of my research has been a proposal to transform our idea of the international system from a collection of states to a conception of an international society of all human societies and all human beings, with international law as the law of that society, serving the common good of all-humanity.