International Relations in Political Thought Texts from the Ancient Greeks to the First World War

SAMUEL RACHEL (1628–91), German jurist, diplomat, and professor of moral philosophy. In contrast to Pufendorf, who, like Grotius, based international law (or “the law of nations,” as it was then called) on natural law, Rachel argued that the law of nations consists of positive laws jointly enacted by sovereigns and expressed in treaties between them. This international law must be distinguished from natural as well as civil law. In rejecting natural law as a source of international law and emphasizing the importance of treaties, Rachel adopts a positivist view of international law as resting on state practice, anticipating mainstream international legal doctrine by more than a century.

From “On the Law of Nations”

I. Not only has Nature provided its own Law for men, whereby, as if by a world-wide chain, they are bound to one another in virtue of being men, but mankind has itself also laid down various positive laws for its own guidance, not merely those by which in every State the government binds its subjects to itself or by which these bind themselves to one another, but also those which the human race, divided up as it is into independent peoples and different States, employs as a common bond of obligation; and peoples of different forms of government and of different size lie under the control of these rules, which depend for their efficacy upon mutual good faith.