3 - The Use of Force in Writings of ‘Eclectic’ Inclination

Summary

This chapter turns to the ‘eclectic’ literature. Its structure mimics that of the previous chapter. It starts by highlighting how ‘eclectic’ authors thought about the international legal order. Unlike naturalists, they placed natural and positive law on an equal footing. This translated into a method for custom identification and determination in which the potential contradictions between positive rules and natural principles was erased by presupposing that States’ behaviours were always guided by reason. The third and fourth sections of the chapter respectively try to see how this method was applied to establish the existence of a rule of non-intervention and the exceptions to said principle. They show, on the one hand, that the principle of non-intervention was once more deduced from the principles of independence and equality and, on the other hand, that practice was much more engaged with to establish the exception to non-intervention.