This conference encourages debate between historical and contemporary accounts of Kantian themes in ethics law and politics. Immanuel Kant envisaged a cosmopolitan federation of independent republics as the only way to secure peace. The means to achieving this end are the rule of law, both domestically in the form of republicanism and internationally in the form of cosmopolitanism. The Kantian perspective unites statist and cosmopolitan approaches by insisting on both the sovereignty of states as the only guarantee of popular rule domestically and on cosmopolitanism as the only guarantee of peace internationally. Kant’s treatment of law and politics points towards a highest political good which law and politics ought to pursue.