The acceleration of history and the increasingly rapid advancement of the postmodern project, aimed at the transcendence of humanity by itself, makes consideration of the fundamentals of the progressive project necessary, but also inevitable. Among them is its dedication to the hectic search for hitherto unsuspected “human rights” and their instant realization in the name of “natural law,” a subject the French historian and political philosopher Pierre Manent has studied in depth and brilliantly illuminated in a number of works, most recently Natural Law and Human Rights: Toward a Recovery of Practical Reason.
“Man,” he says, “is the being who possesses rights, and to live humanly is to assert one’s rights… Rights and self-interest are the two principles that allow for the ordering of the human world without recourse to law as the rule and measure of action” – absent, however, any regard for practical reason as the proper context for action. The result is political paralysis, a perfect example being the British government under Sir Keir Starmer, a former human rights lawyer who, as Prime Minister, is attempting to rule his country by “fleeing from the law,” as Manent would say, insofar as it is based in natural law.
‘How can a law that cannot, finally, be enforced in practice by anyone be fairly described as law at all?’
This explains his unwillingness to defend his country against invasion by the Third World “migrants” from across the English Channel and his refusal to commit it to the current war in the Middle East.
Confronted by the need to act, whether at home or abroad, Sir Keir resembles a scrupulous Buddhist who fears to take a step down the garden path lest he tread, accidentally, on a bug, a beetle, a worm, a mosquito, or a flea. (There could be an inalienable human right underfoot!)
Today, in the same way that the words “human rights” provoke an immediately skeptical reaction in the mind of anyone who is not an ideological liberal, so “international law” does – or soon will. Is the thing really philosophically plausible, morally sensible, or politically practical? And yet it is a historical fact that the concept has been closely associated with natural law theory since the time of the Greek city states and the Roman Republic and Empire. Following their collapse, an originally rudimentary concept of the subject was developed and elaborated for nearly two millennia, largely in conformity with the doctrines of the Roman Catholic Church – beginning with St. Augustine and continuing down through Grotius, Pufendorf, Burlamaqui and Vattel.
The Carolingian Empire was consolidated on Christian principles and promoted them, in the field of international law as in others, through the efforts and designs of Church councils, a long succession of Popes and numerous bishops occupying prominent positions in councils of state and trained in canon law; these were the principal forces behind the creation of a substantial body of international law, while the Pope himself was widely accepted as the arbiter in disputes between national governments.
Added to all of these agents was the widening role of international trade and commerce in need of a body of law to regulate and control merchants and companies of every country in their active relationships with one another, on land and on the high seas. It is important to add that the development of a system of international law was essential in promoting and managing political and commercial relations between civilized, specifically Christian peoples and nations in an age when the prevailing concept of man and the world remained overwhelmingly a theological one. That is unlike today, when national law is interpreted and applied in a secular and basically anti-religious age and in the context of a globalized, multicultural world largely hostile to the Christian religion and in which Christianity has been put on the defensive chiefly by the formerly Christian countries themselves. It is then further deconstructed and deformed by left-liberal and anti-western lawyers, chancellors-of-state, and international courts, few of them Christians or composed of Christians and most of them reliably ignorant of Scripture and Christian moral teaching, let alone Christian theology.
While Machiavelli’s influence on western thought and philosophy was in the main morally pernicious, he did alert western thinkers and actors to the dangerous futility of Christian societies fighting the non- or anti-Christian enemy according to a strictly Christian code and strictly Christian principles; in fighting a mortal but morally inferior adversary with one hand (or both) tied behind their backs.
In the development of international law, Islam – unlike Christendom – had no established legal precedent to work from beyond unwritten tribal custom and so its contribution to it remains based on the Qur’an, the Sunnah (the life, teachings, and acts of Mohammed), and the ijma (judicial consensus). The People’s Republic of China knows no international law beyond that of Marxist determinism; post-Soviet Russia has no law higher than the right of Mother Russia’s historical destiny to prevail. Whatever of legal, historical, philosophical or moral understanding these nations have to contribute to “international law” as it has been recognized by civilized peoples for two millennia is either worthless or pernicious, or both.
More, international law as western history knows it is a creation of aristocratic, monarchical and imperial regimes representing the highest civilizations known to history. Today, as for the past three-quarters of a century, it has been interpreted, added to, and tinkered with by international convocations, national and international courts and bureaucracies, and nongovernmental organizations and passed into law without benefit of popular vote, direct or indirect, and without public consultation aforehand.
Hence the “populist” response to the thing called “international law” is, quite rightly, “International law – what is that?” Such skepticism invites the commonsensical question: “How can a law that cannot – finally – be enforced in practice by anyone be fairly described as law at all?”
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