`In International Law there is really only one problem:what to do about Natural Law.` Discuss.In your answer you must discuss what aspects of international Law display characteristics of Natural Law and what aspects display characteristics of Positivis

Running Head : In International Law there is really only one problem what to do about Natural Law

In International Law there is really only one problem : what to do about Natural Law

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The law of nature as a source of international law , reasone by correlation with the supposed primeval state of man , agrees that all independent political community is , by virtue of its independence , in a state of nature towards other communities but they diverge in their conception as to what was the state of man

in primeval nature . Some assert that it was a contented being at peace with neighbors and observing the Golden Rule , while others maintain that from the dawn of history man has been affianced in a desperate struggle for existence not simply with nature but with his fellow men and is therefore naturally rapacious

The founder of what we may call the Pure Law of Nature School was Samuel Pufendorf (1632-1694 , who occupied the first chair of the Law of Nature and Nations recognized in a university , namely , that at Heidelberg . His most important work , De Jure Naturae et Gentium , was published in 1672 .Pufendorf begins with the intention that in a state of nature precursor to any act of man , all men must be considered as equal , that is , every man must enjoy a natural liberty in which he acts in his own right and is matter to the power of no other man (Pufendorf , 1934 ,

br 158 but man , he says , never did live at one and the same time in such a simple state of nature , for , according to Holy Writ , the family relationship began with the formation of man , and "therefore " to quote his words "a state of nature never really existed , except in some altered form , or only in part , as when , indeed , some men gathered collectively with others into a civil state , or some such body , but retained a natural liberty against the rest of mankind though the more groups there were in this division of the human race , and the smaller their membership the nearer it should have approached a pure state of nature "And so he adds "it was not the first men but their descendants who began indeed to live in a state of nature (p . 163

Natural law scholars usually believe that rules of international law are , at least in some way , part of an established which inevitably predated the development of any contemporary legal system . Yet societies are forceful , even if the basic rules which structure their legal systems profess not to be . In the absence of an overarching sovereign the international legal system can be considered mainly dynamic legal system . At some point its members may consequently conceive - or conceivably they have already conceived in a different way of their requirements in terms of basic , peremptory rules . The majority international lawyers would recognize that jus cogens rules themselves have not always existed . Consequently , it would seem that jus...