International law is archipelagic. Alongside “islands” of effective international law, you find offshore zones in which law is either undeveloped or manifestly ineffective or in which different norms, different arrangements and even unrestrained “political” factors are operating. Lawyers who work in these zones, whether on behalf of State and non-State actors, require different modes of thinking. They must be able to locate themselves in unstable decision processesby deploying appropriate legal tools and mapping schema; to identify the factors influencing decision, distinguishing the operative from the mythic ones; to project possible decisions and assess the extent they contribute to minimum and optimum order and, if they do not, to invent feasible alternative decisions. Michael Reisman describes the world international law is attached to and sets out a theory about law that enables the international lawyer to identify the common interest in its many zones and to work towards achieving a world public order of human dignity.