PART II - INTERNATIONAL LAW
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 27 July 2009
Summary
The “law of nations” (jus gentium) is what is now called “international law.” Unfortunately, the phrase “international law” is misleading because it suggests a kind of law that only governs the relations between nations – something that jurists used to call “jus inter gentes.” However, the law of nations always has governed not only international matters but also many intranational matters. The fact that the law of nations also governed many intranational matters comes out clearly in Vattel's discussion of the justification under the law of nations for members of a state dissolving their relations with their prince if the prince failed to protect them, and establishing an independent state:
The state is obliged to defend and preserve all its members… ; and the prince owes the same assistance to his subjects. If, therefore, the state or the prince refuses or neglects to succour a body of people who are exposed to imminent danger, the latter, being thus abandoned, become perfectly free to provide for their own safety and preservation in whatever manner they find most convenient, without paying the least regard to those who, by abandoning them, have been the first to fail in their duty. The country of Zug, being attacked by the Swiss in 1352, sent for succour to the duke of Austria, its sovereign; but that prince, being engaged in discourse concerning his hawks, at the time when the deputies appeared before him, would scarcely condescend to hear them. Thus abandoned, the people of Zug entered into the Helvetic confederacy.
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- The Constitution as TreatyThe International Legal Constructionalist Approach to the U.S. Constitution, pp. 59 - 61Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2007