Reprint of the sole edition. Originally published: New York: Praeger, [1958]. xv, 294 pp. Bowett observes that the use or threat of force by any state can be a delict, an approved sanction, or a measure taken in self-defense. He examines the evolution of the doctrine in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, with the assumption of the existence of a state's unlimited 'right' to go to war. He then attempts to outline the limited and provisional effects of this right under the U.N. Charter.