 Second, there are normative questions about the proper goals that international law—or its domains, such as international human rights law, international environmental law, and international criminal law—should advance and the means by which it may properly do so and, relatedly, how the legitimacy of international law is to be assessed. A recurring issue is the extent to which ethical-political standards fashioned to assess domestic law—such as democracy, the rule of law, and even legitimacy itself—apply to international law (an important theme in the work of Buchanan, e.g., Buchanan 2013). Due to the long period of philosophical neglect of international law, we are still at an early stage in forming an adequate picture of the political morality appropriate to its distinctive nature and role. These questions are mostly discussed in sections 4, 5, and 6 of this entry.