The Development and Formation of International Law

Extract

“Law in general,” says Montesquieu, “is human reason so far as it controls all the people of the earth, and the political and civil laws of each nation can only be considered as individual cases in which this human reason is applied.” Reason was held by the Romans to constitute one of the fundamental elements of law. Cicero announced the existence of “a veritable law, true reason (recta ratio), in conformity with nature, universal, immutable and eternal, the commands of which constitute a call to duty and the prohibitions of which avert evil.”

It is at present unnecessary to consider what influence the Stoic, Academic and Epicurean doctrines had on Roman jurisprudence, and it would be risky to support as absolutely final any view which might be expressed on the subject. During the last phases of the Republic there had already come to exist in the world’s capital a fusion of the different schools of philosophy; and traces of the Platonic teachings constantly appear in the expression of the great orator’s lofty thought.