The liberal-communitarian debate in contemporary political philosophy and its significance for international relations

2000 ◽  
Vol 26 (2) ◽  
pp. 233-251 ◽  
Author(s):  
DAVID MORRICE
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Natural Law ◽  
International Relations Theory ◽  
Moral Integrity ◽  
World Government ◽  
Moral Reality ◽  
False Dichotomy ◽  
Law Of Nations ◽  
The Law

This article examines the debate between liberalism and communitarianism in contemporary political philosophy and considers its significance for international relations. The debate tends to pose a false dichotomy between liberalism and communitarianism, and neither position alone can provide an adequate basis for international relations theory. It is necessary to go beyond the liberal-communitarian divide in order to reconcile the valuable insights that may be rescued from both positions. There is a community which is a moral reality, which includes all individuals and maintains their moral integrity, and which can accommodate all legitimate, smaller communities. This is the community of humanity, which is recognized in traditional theories of natural law and the law of nations. The article concludes by considering whether the universal community of humanity requires and justifies world government.

Hobbes among the Classic Jurists

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Boucher
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
International Law ◽  
The State ◽  
Law Of Nature ◽  
Law Of Nations ◽  
Complete Identification ◽  
The Law ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Hedley Bull ◽  
Hans Morgenthau

The classic foundational status that Hobbes has been afforded by contemporary international relations theorists is largely the work of Hans Morgenthau, Martin Wight, and Hedley Bull. They were not unaware that they were to some extent creating a convenient fiction, an emblematic realist, a shorthand for all of the features encapsulated in the term. The detachment of international law from the law of nature by nineteenth-century positivists opened Hobbes up, even among international jurists, to be portrayed as almost exclusively a mechanistic theorist of absolute state sovereignty. If we are to endow him with a foundational place at all it is not because he was an uncompromising realist equating might with right, on the analogy of the state of nature, but instead to his complete identification of natural law with the law of nations. It was simply a matter of subject that distinguished them, the individual and the state.

Part I Histories, Ch.3 Transformations of Natural Law: Germany 1648–1815

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Koskenniemi Martti
Keyword(s):  
Natural Law ◽  
Public Law ◽  
Western Modernity ◽  
Law Of Nations ◽  
External Events ◽  
Legislative Policies ◽  
The Law ◽  
International Power

This chapter examines the transformation of ideas about international power that took place in the idiom of natural law between 1648 and 1815, a key period of early Western modernity. Pressed in part by external events and in part by developments in the relations between the Holy Roman Empire’s constituent units, university jurists switched between abstract justification of the imperial structure and deliberating the technical merits of alternative legislative policies. These debates had an immediate relevance to how German jurists conceived jus gentium (the law of nations) and why they would finally discuss it under the title of ‘public law of Europe’. Thus, the transformations of natural law in the period 1648–1815 constructed and delimited the ways in which what is settled in the international world and what is open for political contestation was to be conceived up to the present.

Le Droit des Nations aux Indes Orientales Aux XVIE, XVIIE, XVIIIE siècles (1964)

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
C. H. Alexandrowicz
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Indian Ocean ◽  
Natural Law ◽  
European Law ◽  
Historical Reality ◽  
Law Of Nations ◽  
The Family ◽  
The Indian Ocean ◽  
Territorial Rights ◽  
The Law

This chapter challenges the projection of nineteenth-century assumptions onto the historical reality of the sixteenth through eighteenth centuries by arguing that the earlier transactions between European and Asian powers took place under the rubric of the law of nations. The classical European authors founded their theories on natural law and considered the family of nations universal, and Europeans acquired territorial rights in Asia in accord with principles of European law, through conquest or treaties of cession. The law of nations in Europe at this time was still in formation, and juridical developments were affected by the practice of states in the Indian Ocean. The chapter considers uncertainties and debates around sovereignty (vassals, suzerains, trading companies), territorial title, and maritime law, particularly in the controversy between Grotius and Freitas, and the rise of discriminatory monopolistic treaties that restricted Asian sovereigns’ ability to deal with more than one European power.

Some Problems in the History of the Law of Nations in Asia (1963)

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
C. H. Alexandrowicz
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
International Law ◽  
Case Law ◽  
Legal Aspects ◽  
State Sovereignty ◽  
Law Of Nations ◽  
The Family ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Law

This chapter considers problems in the study of the history of the law of nations in Asia. It argues that international lawyers have focused their attention on the legal aspects of contemporary problems of international relations and politics, and on the operation of tribunals and quasi-tribunals and the case law they produce. Writers of present day treatises of international law devote just a few introductory pages to the history of the subject and these short chapters are often based on similar introductions in nineteenth-century treatises. The chapter discusses some of the elements of legal change in which European–Asian relations played a significant role; the gradual elimination of the natural law outlook by growing European positivism; the principle of universality of the law of nations and the principle of identity of de facto and de jure State sovereignty; and the use of capitulations to delay the ‘entry’ of Asian States into the family of nations.

The Authority of Vattel

1913 ◽  
Vol 7 (3) ◽  
pp. 395-410 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charles G. Fenwick
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
International Law ◽  
The Political ◽  
Law Of Nations ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Law ◽  
History Of International Law ◽  
Political Philosopher

There is no more significant commentary on the growth of international law, both in precision and in comprehensiveness, than an estimate of the relative authority of the name of Vattel in the world of international relations a century ago and in that of today. A century ago not even the name of Grotius himself was more potent in its influence upon questions relating to international law than that of Vattel. Vattel's treatise on the law of nations was quoted by judicial tribunals, in speeches before legislative assemblies, and in the decrees and correspondence of executive officials. It was the manual of the student, the reference work of the statesman, and the text from which the political philosopher drew inspiration. Publicists considered it sufficient to cite the authority of Vattel to justify and give conclusiveness and force to statements as to the proper conduct of a state in its international relations.At the present day the name and treatise of Vattel have both passed into the remoter field of the history of international law. It is safe to say that in no modern controversy over the existence and force of an alleged rule of international law would publicists seek to strengthen the position taken by them by quoting the authority of Vattel. As an exposition of the law of nations at a given period of its growth, the work can, it is true, lose nothing of its value, but in saying that it has thus won its place irrevocably among the classics of international law, we are merely repeating that it has lost its value as a treatise on the law of the present day.

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