Matthew Craven is Professor of International Law at SOAS University of London. He is author of The Decolonisation of International Law (2007), which won the inaugural European Society of International Law prize in the same year, and has authored or edited a number of other books including International Law and the Cold War (2019). He is currently working on a project on international law and geopolitics exploring the interconnections between the two traditions of thought and practice. Sundhya Pahuja is Melbourne Laureate Professor and ARC Kathleen Fitzpatrick Laureate Fellow, Director of the Laureate Program in Global Corporations and International Law. She is the winner of the Max Planck–Cambridge Prize for International Law. She is known for her work on the encounter between plural forms of international law and the legal, historical, political and economic dimensions of the relations between Global South and North. Sundhya is the author of the prize-winning book, Decolonising International Law: Development, Economic Growth and the Politics of Universality (Cambridge 2011) and the co-editor of International Law and the Cold War (2019). Gerry Simpson is Professor of Public International Law at the London School of Economics and Political Science. He is the author of Great Powers and Outlaw States (2004), Law, War and Crime: War Crimes Trials and the Reinvention of International Law (2008) and The Sentimental Life of International Law: Literature, Language and Longing in Global Politics (2021). Gerry is currently writing a book on nuclearism entitled: The Atomics: My Nuclear Family at the End of the Earth.

'Rival Legalities fundamentally re-orients received understandings of the cold war through a nuanced and illuminating account of the relationship between the history of law and the history of international relations. It brilliantly reinterprets how the encounter between competing legal worlds co-created a pluriverse of empire and resistance, risk and possibility.' Vasuki Nesiah, New York University

• 1. Introduction; 2. A (Dis)United nations, a hesitant inauguration; 3. The Amero-soviet cold war; 4. Practices of diplomacy or international law and being neutral; 5. International legal experimentalism: anti-anti colonialism and third world legalities; 6. Disrupting the cold war: revolutionary internationalism in the global south; 7. Secrets and spies: espionage, surveillance and the covert cold war; 8. Nuclearism: globalising the cold war; 9. Fallout: redescription, periodisation and aftermath; Acknowledgements; A note on the cover image; Bibliography; Index.