The international doctrine of State sovereignty bears an obvious resemblance to the domestic-liberal doctrine of individual liberty. Both characterize the social world in descriptive and normative terms. They describe social life in terms of the activities of individual agents (“legal subjects”, citizens, States) and set down the basic conditions within which the relations between these agents should be conducted.

But the relations between individual liberty and normative principles might be figured in alternative ways. We have seen that a pre-classical scholarship started out with assuming the existence of a normative code – a set of rights and duties in different areas of the Prince's conduct. That code was normative in its own right. Sovereignty – the Prince's sphere of liberty – had no independent normative status. It was simply a description of the powers and liberties which the Prince was endowed with by the normative code. A reverse perspective was developed by the classical lawyers. For them, the State's sphere of liberty was prior, and normative, and the principles of conduct between States simply followed as a description of what was required to safeguard the anterior liberties. It should not be difficult to recognize the opposition between a descending and an ascending outlook in this explanation of the contrast between early and classical doctrines.

The problem with the classical position is how to explain what is involved in a State's sovereignty – its sphere of liberty – without lapsing into apologism; the conclusion that a State's liberty extends to anything the State itself thinks appropriate to extend it to.