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International Law and Social Structure

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 April 2017

Gerhart Niemeyer*
Affiliation:
Princeton University

Extract

The crisis of practical international law has forced the science of international law to take stock of its most fundamental notions. Discussion is in full sway about the essence of international law, about its adequacy and its development, and about the factors conditioning its growth and effectiveness. Together with this survey of the entire phenomenon of positive international law, attempts are being made to revise the theoretical construction, the philosophy of, and the method of approach to, international law. The most persistent trend in this discussion seems to be toward a functional conception of international law. As yet there is no agreement as to the exact meaning of functionalism. Perhaps it is not even desirable to define this meaning too rigidly during this early phase of the discussion.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © by the American Society of International Law 1940

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References

1 Morgenthau, H. J., “Positivism, Functionalism, and International Law,” this Journal, Vol. 34 (1940), p. 274 Google Scholar.

2 Aronson, M. J., “Cardozo’s Doctrine of Sociological Jurisprudence,” Journal of Social Philosophy, Vol. IV (1938/39), p. 10 Google Scholar.

3 Both these problems are treated by the author of this article in a book on The Function of Politics in International Law, to be published soon. The views presented above have been developed more elaborately in the historical chapters of this book.

4 Heller, H., Staatslehre (1934), p. 128.Google Scholar

5 As quoted by Dupuis, Le Principe d’Êquilibre et le Concert européen (1909), p. 26.

6 Cf. Fletcher Pratt, Road to Empire (1939), p. 68.

7 See Westlake, Collected Papers (ed. Oppenheim, 1914), p. 30 ff., especially p. 32.

8 Heller, H., op. cit., p. 134 Google Scholar.

9 Lauterpacht, H., Private Law Sources and Analogies of International Law (1927), p. 34 Google Scholar.