debates among philosophers presents a challenge for both the international lawyer and the philosopher Indeed, the fault lies not only with moral and political philosophy. Relatively few in writing in international jurisprudence- Fernando Teson, Martti Koskenniemi, and Hurrell are among the handful- have sought to bridge the gap between the disciplines This tendency remains despite the frequency with which international legal theorists write about legitimacy or justice. I hasten to add, with regret, that even fewer in mainstream urisprudence have taken on this task. Instead, following Hart's example in The Concept of Law, they have mostly confined themselves to the ontological questions about whether international law is"really law, an issue fine for an introductory international law class but past which international law scholars(and practitioners )moved long ago This paper thus offers one approach to bring international legal theory and moral and political philosophy together. It analyzes the ethics of international law by casting it as a system of general and special duties, with particular attention to the latter as understood in debates over impartiality in moral philosophy. It does so on the understanding that making a just world under law turns on(1)whether relevant international actors should owe the same or different duties to all other such actors and (2) whether the international system is constructed according to some coherent vision of this problem. What emerges is a set of spheres of general and special duties, and special duties to vastly different sets of actors. The patterns suggest that certain ways of morally justifying those special duties are more persuasive than others; indeed, I believe any special duties can and should be justified from an impartialist perspective. My goals, then, are three-fold: first, to place the basic norms of international law within a structure of5 debates among philosophers presents a challenge for both the international lawyer and the philosopher. Indeed, the fault lies not only with moral and political philosophy. Relatively few in writing in international jurisprudence – Fernando Teson, Martti Koskenniemi, and Hurrell are among the handful – have sought to bridge the gap between the disciplines. This tendency remains despite the frequency with which international legal theorists write about legitimacy or justice. I hasten to add, with regret, that even fewer in mainstream jurisprudence have taken on this task. Instead, following Hart’s example in The Concept of Law, they have mostly confined themselves to the ontological questions about whether international law is “really law,” an issue fine for an introductory international law class but past which international law scholars (and practitioners) moved long ago. This paper thus offers one approach to bring international legal theory and moral and political philosophy together. It analyzes the ethics of international law by casting it as a system of general and special duties, with particular attention to the latter as understood in debates over impartiality in moral philosophy. It does so on the understanding that making a just world under law turns on (1) whether relevant international actors should owe the same or different duties to all other such actors and (2) whether the international system is constructed according to some coherent vision of this problem. What emerges is a set of spheres of general and special duties, and special duties to vastly different sets of actors. The patterns suggest that certain ways of morally justifying those special duties are more persuasive than others; indeed, I believe any special duties can and should be justified from an impartialist perspective. My goals, then, are three-fold: first, to place the basic norms of international law within a structure of