International Law
NOTE: Although the following article has not been revised for this edition of the Encyclopedia, the substantive coverage is currently appropriate. The editors have provided a list of recent works at the end of the article to facilitate research and exploration of the topic.
International law is the system of rules and principles governing relations at the interstate level. It originally developed in response to the needs of states but in recent times has grown to include international organizations and, to some extent, individuals.
International law as a systematic body of rules began in Europe in the seventeenth century. Before then, and from earliest history, rules existed governing the interrelations of various groups of people (Nussbaum 1958). But the rules were systematized in Europe only when the contacts among peoples became regular and frequent and the idea of a single ruler for all known society foundered. That occurred with the collapse of the Holy Roman Empire during the Thirty Years War (1618–1648). The state system developed in its place, characterized by a number of kingdoms and principalities, each equal to the others, sovereign within its own borders, and subject to no outside sovereign. Hugo Grotius, a Dutchman who lived during this time, wrote a seminal book, De Jure Belli ac Pacis (1620–1625), describing legal rules, derived from natural law, by which these states could achieve peaceful coexistence and, when they failed, how they could conduct their wars with some semblance of humanity.
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