This book originated as the Hersch Lauterpacht Memorial Lectures, given at Cambridge in March 2019. Because Lauterpacht played such an important role in developing the basis for international legal liberalism, I think it appropriate to say a few words about him in this preface. I do so even though my primary concern in the book is with democracy rather than liberalism per se. Sir Hersch Lauterpacht (1897–1960) was one of the leading figures in international law in the twentieth century: teacher, scholar and British judge of the International Court of Justice in the Hague. Born to a middleclass Jewish family in Austro-Hungarian Galicia, Lauterpacht’s life covers a period in which Jews were transformed, and transformational, in international society. His is a quintessentially twentieth-century story: An ostjude going first to Vienna and then to London; retraining himself there, as did so many émigrés; and eventually rising, through sheer talent and energy, to the pinnacle of international legal society, even as his former world was being destroyed. Lauterpacht’s career also spanned the transformation of international law, from a framework focused on interactions among sovereign states to one in which human rights were seen as being a legitimate subject of international concern; individuals not only had rights but also duties, and could bear international criminal responsibility; and intergovernmental organizations became important actors. Lauterpacht played a major role in providing an intellectual underpinning for all these developments, which can be broadly characterized as a liberal transformation.