The book aims to provide a “normative account” of the crime of aggression and the treatment of soldiers under international law. A normative account articulates a moral framework that would make sense of the law’s normative posture on a given issue. To offer such an account is not argue for that moral framework from first principles. Rather, it is to inhabit the internal legal point of view, and to hold that the moral standards articulated best make sense of the law that we have. This chapter argues that a candidate account is superior to its alternatives in achieving that objective to the extent that it better satisfies four criteria. First, it must offer an explanation for what the regime unambiguously requires, permits, and prohibits on the issue at hand. Second, it ought to reflect the law’s core purposes. Third, it should cohere with connected or related laws in domains adjacent to that which it explains. Finally, if multiple accounts pass the first three tests, the superior remaining account is that which is most morally plausible. The chapter defends the project against realist objections and explains the connection between the law and the human experience of soldiering discussed in chapter 1.