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The notion of international law
Confl icts
Confl icts accompany the coexistence of human beings. The reasons for the confl icts are many, but the primary source lies within the human being itself, including the inherent absence of equal opportunities and conflicts of interest stemming from the limited resources to satisfy human aspirations and desires.
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Normative systems as the instruments for the avoidance of confl icts
The normative systems help avoid and check conf icts.
The normative systems are established universally in every social setting where humans interact. Starting with the family, which is the frst unit of social order, continuing with the educational or working communities, and fnishing with a state, which itself is a sizeable social structure made up of small and large substructures, humans tend to establish and develop norms and place them in a distinctive system to ensure rules are followed.
Civil peace
Consequently, every normative system has a particular signifcance and infuence over the lives of human beings. Nevertheless, because of the apparent effectiveness of its application model, the law is the most effective way to establish civil peace.
National law regulates the interaction of the state, other legal (juridical) persons, and natural (physical) persons. However, natural persons (human beings) are the primary addressees of national law.
International law refers to many structures (entities) of the interstate system, including states; however, its primary concern is the legal regulation of the international interaction between states.
Hence, national law exists for humans, international law for states.
66THE NOTION OF INTERNATIONAL LAW
Among the many famous defnitions of international law widely accepted in academia, some of them are presented below to the attention of the reader:
• [T]he law of nations is originally no other than the law of nature applied to nations.’ –
Emer de Vattel (1714–1767)66
66 ‘This is the law which Grotius, and those who follow him, call the internal law of nations, on account of its being obligatory on nations in point of conscience. Several writers term it the natural law of nations.’
Emer de Vattel, The Law of Nations, or, Principles of the Law of Nature, Applied to the Conduct and Affairs of Nations and Sovereigns, with Three Early Essays on the Origin and Nature of Natural Law and on Luxury,
Béla Kapossy and Richard Whatmore (ed and intro), Thomas Nugent (tr) (Liberty Fund, Inc. 2008) 68
