Book contents
- The Law of Strangers
- The Law of Strangers
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- About the Contributors
- Introduction
- Part I Hersch Zvi Lauterpacht
- 1 The “Natural Right of the Jewish People”
- 2 A Closet Positivist
- Part 2 Hans Kelsen
- Part 3 Louis Henkin
- Part 4 Egon Schwelb
- Part 5 René Cassin
- Part 6 Shabtai Rosenne
- Part 7 Julius Stone
- Index
2 - A Closet Positivist
Lauterpacht between Law and Diplomacy
from Part I - Hersch Zvi Lauterpacht
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 July 2019
- The Law of Strangers
- The Law of Strangers
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- About the Contributors
- Introduction
- Part I Hersch Zvi Lauterpacht
- 1 The “Natural Right of the Jewish People”
- 2 A Closet Positivist
- Part 2 Hans Kelsen
- Part 3 Louis Henkin
- Part 4 Egon Schwelb
- Part 5 René Cassin
- Part 6 Shabtai Rosenne
- Part 7 Julius Stone
- Index
Summary
The evidence from Hersch Lauterpacht’s private correspondence that he sought “to renew the Law of Nations and the Jewish nation together” is quite persuasive. Like many other Jewish professionals of the early twentieth century, Lauterpacht is likely to have felt no conflict whatsoever between his Jewish nationalism and his cosmopolitanism. Each had a moral-historical content; each informed the other. Like international law, Zionism was fed by impulses that were in part idealist, in part realist. This is no surprise. As I have explained elsewhere, any political-legal theory needs both elements so as to seem persuasive. Jurists have long ago learned to respond to the interminable critiques that international law is just a moral utopia by demonstrating that its very foundation lies in state will, diplomacy, and the division of the world into territorial states.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Law of StrangersJewish Lawyers and International Law in the Twentieth Century, pp. 43 - 48Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2019