The genesis of this book was a workshop entitled ‘Empire or Empowerment? The Role of International Law in Building Democracy and Justice after Conflict’ held at the Australian National University in Canberra on 9–10 August 2007. The workshop brought together scholars from a variety of backgrounds and disciplines to discuss the ways that ideas of democracy and justice influenced post-conflict societies.

We would like to thank all the participants at the workshop for the stimulating and energetic conversation. Many of the presentations are included in this collection in revised form and we are grateful to our contributors for their generosity and willingness to revise their papers, sometimes right until the publication deadline! Some participants in the workshop are not represented in this collection, and we acknowledge their valuable contributions to our deliberations, especially those of Raymond Apthorpe and Anthony Regan, both of the Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies at the Australian National University.

The book's title has evolved, along with the chapters themselves, since the time of the workshop. During the workshop there was a sense that the dichotomy implied in the title ‘Empire or Empowerment’ did not capture the range of roles envisaged for international law in post-conflict societies. The contributions to this collection focus instead on the expectations and hopes created by and for international law in such contexts and the way that these have been met or disappointed. As the pages of this book illustrate, international law can assume many different roles.