Abstract
Current political affairs quite clearly demonstrate that the whole notion of international law still finds its limits in the assumption of state sovereignty.1 Hobbes’ theory of the state of nature provides a crucial starting point for looking into these puzzling issues since he himself had claimed ‘concerning the Offices of one Souveraign to another, which are comprehended in that Law, which is commonly called the Law of Nations, I need not say any thing in this place; because the Law of Nations, and the Law of Nature, is the same thing’.2 It is too easy to dismiss this assertion as proof that Hobbes was not really bothered by the question of international law.3 I will approach this issue in two distinct stages.
The principle of international law… should be observed. But since the sovereignty of states is the principle governing their mutual relations, they exist to that extent in a state of nature in relation to one another.
(G. W. F. Hegel, Elements of the Philosophy of Right, §333)
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Notes
T. Hobbes, Leviathan, ed. R. Tuck (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), p. 244.
Among the almost boundless literature on Hobbes there are remarkably few works which are concerned with the issue of international relations. Cf. T. Airaksinen and M. A. Bertman (eds), Hobbes: War among Nations (Aldershot, 1989).
R. Tuck, The Right of War and Peace. Political Thought and the Iinternational Order (Oxford, 1999);
D. Hüning, ‘“Inter arma silent leges”. Naturrecht, Staat und Völkerrecht bei Thomas Hobbes’, in R. Voigt (ed.), Der Leviathan (Baden-Baden, 1999), pp. 129–63;
P. Schröder, ‘Völkerrecht und Souveränität bei Thomas Hobbes’, in M. Peters and P. Schröder (eds), Souveränitätskonzeptionen. Beiträge zur Analyse politischer Ordnungsvorstellungen im 17. bis zum 20. Jahrhundert (Berlin, 2000), pp. 41–57.
See R. Merkel, ‘“Lauter leidige Tröster”? Kants Friedensschrift und die Idee eines Völkerstrafgerichtshofs’, in R. Merkel and R. Wittmann (eds), ‘Zum ewigen Frieden’. Grundlagen, Aktualität und Aussichten einer Idee von Immanuel Kant (Frankfurt/Main, 1996), pp. 309–50, in particular p. 325.
I. Kant, ‘The Metaphysics of Morals’, in The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Immanuel Kant. Practical Philosophy, ed. M. J. Gregor (Cambridge, 1996), pp. 353–615, quote pp. 455ff.
See Hegel’s criticism of Kant’s idea of a perpetual peace. G. W. F. Hegel, Elements of the Philosophy of Right, ed. A. W. Wood, trans. H. B. Nisbet (Cambridge, 1998), p. 368, §333.
I do not want to discuss Schmitt’s political career here, nor his writings in any greater detail, since I intend to use his arguments only in the context of the philosophical problems this paper is concerned with. For a fuller account on Schmitt, however, see J. P. McCormick, Carl Schmitt’s Critique of Liberalism. Against Politics as Technology (Cambridge, 1997);
H. Quaritsch (ed.), Complexio Oppositorum. Über Carl Schmitt (Berlin, 1988),
and R. Mehring, Carl Schmitt zur Einführung (Hamburg, 1992). It is quite striking, however, that there is no full account in any of the studies on Schmitt that discusses his writings on international law.
See J. Rawls, The Law of Peoples (Harvard, 1999), p. 10. (Henceforth LP): ‘The basic idea is to follow Kant’s lead.’
H. Kelsen, Das Problem der Souveränität und die Theorie des Völkerrechts. Beitrag zu einer reinen Rechtslehre [1928] (Stuttgart, 1960), p. 320.
Cf. C. Schmitt, Politische Theologie. Vier Kapitel zur Lehre von der Souveränität [1934] (Berlin, 1990); and, Die Diktatur [1922] (Berlin, 1989); also, Positionen und Begriffe im Kampf mit Weimar-Genf-Versailles 1923–1939 [1940] (Berlin, 1988).
Cf. C. Schmitt, Land und Meer. Eine weltgeschichtliche Betrachtung [1942] (Köln, 1981); and, Der Nomos der Erde im Völkerrecht des Jus Publicum Europeaum [1950] (Berlin, 1988).
J. Rawls, A Theory of Justice, revised edition (Oxford, 1999), p. 211 (henceforth TJ).
For an important criticism of the original position and the veil of ignorance in Rawls’ theory, see W. Kersting, John Rawls zur Einführung (Hamburg, 1993), p. 45. See also LP, p. 30 f.
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Schröder, P. (2002). Natural Law, Sovereignty and International Law: A Comparative Perspective. In: Hunter, I., Saunders, D. (eds) Natural Law and Civil Sovereignty. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781403919533_14
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