The research aims to draw up a table of the theories on international law and international relations. This task shall be accomplished by two steps, the first one consisting in the elaboration of a table concerning the international law "schools" until the Second Word War. The creation of a pattern regarding the historically consolidated approaches to the international law is necessary for a better understanding of both their conceptual structure and relations to each other. In an innovative way, the history of international law shall be reviewed recurring to the categories of the political philosophy, and overcoming, this way, the traditional interpretation concentrated on the political and diplomatic history.

In other words, the authors and ideas shall not be presented in their historical context but in their conceptual relationships, in order to enucleate better the theoretical and practical options, alternative to each other, respectively related to every "school". Furthermore, the reconstruction of the conceptual structure of the classic international law theories is indispensable in order to evaluate the novelty and heuristic content of the contemporary proposals. On the theoretical ground laid down by the analysis of the historical interpretations will base the second step of the research, namely the enquiry into the contemporary international law.

Also in this case, each trend will be tested with regard to its heuristic significance, its innovation in comparison with the historic patterns and its capability to explain the reality of actual positive law. The proposed research has a genuinely multidisciplinary character. Methods and results of positive international law, political philosophy and political sciences will be brought together and critically evaluated, in order to create an interpretation poem, which may be helpful for a better understanding of the most actual developments in the field of international law.