19 „In many ways, non-Christian states have lived for many years on the margins of international [society], in the sense that they have not played a very active role, nor have they played a major role”: A Cassese, International Law in a Divided World (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1986) 39. The key to understanding the functions that each national or international legal system performs lies in the structure of its social environment. Of course, such a relationship is not unilateral. But it is above all the specific character of the social group that is imprinted in the law. The law reacts only incidentally to its social environment. Fundamentally, social life is expressed in two different group relations: those of a society and those of a community. The relations between master and slave in slave societies, between shareholders of modern commercial enterprises, or between the ruling class and the subjects of a totalitarian state offer examples of the first type; And those between members of a family, a blood fraternity or a living church are an example. An examination of legal systems Is international law only a pious fraud that makes augurs smile? To be satisfied with an unqualified assertion would be as unrealistic and unscientific as the attitude of those who choose to ignore the ideological functions of international law. As long as there is a system of world power politics, international law must serve its purposes. But international law is not just a law of power. It is also a law of reciprocity, and even the traces of the law of coordination are not totally absent. 20 „In short, it can be argued that this set of rules greatly facilitated the task of the European powers by providing them with a large number of legal instruments designed to make the conquest soft and easy.
First, international law allowed States to acquire sovereignty over these territories by downgrading them to terrae nullius, i.e. territories that belonged to no one, and by depriving local communities or rulers of any international prestige” (ibid., 42). To understand the origins and growth of world power politics, it is necessary to know the three most powerful agencies behind the formation of this system. In constant interaction with each other, tendencies towards disintegration, expansion and centralization have produced our global society. 4 It is important here to distinguish my definition of international society from the definition given to the concept of „international society” by English school theorists. The English school uses the term international society to describe „a group of states (or, more generally, a group of independent political communities) which not only form a system, in the sense that the behaviour of each is a necessary factor in the calculations of others, but have also established, through dialogue and consent, common rules and institutions for the conduct of their relations. and recognize their common interest in maintaining these arrangements”: H. Bull and A. Watson, „Introduction” in H.
Bull and A. Watson (eds.), Expansion of International Society (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989) 1. English school theorists therefore use the term international society in general to describe cases in which two or more states have created legal rules to ensure a common interest. It is important to note that, in this chapter, I use the concept of international society to describe a specific regulatory framework that emerged in the years following the end of World War II to achieve the common goal of maintaining international peace and security. In a society where power is paramount, it is not anomalous that the law primarily serves the purposes of those who wield power, rather than holding back the powerful in the interests of the weak, who may need the protection of the law. A few examples may illustrate the ideological aspects of international law. Substantially different legal forms: the law of power and the law of coordination. The former fulfills above all the function of enabling social coexistence and adapting divergent interests to the dominant power relationship between rulers and the governed. Its task is to contribute to the further integration of the Community and, in exceptional cases, is limited to the application of minimum standards which the Community considers indispensable. However, it cannot be overemphasized that these pure types of society and community and their corresponding legal forms always tend to be more or less vague.
A community will often be willing to use the self-interest of its members as a vehicle for social action, and similarly, a society requires a minimum of equity and reciprocity. Second, the law of reciprocity provides a meeting point and an intermediate step between the laws of power and coordination. By referring to these three fundamental types of law and by analysing the concrete relationship between them in a given legal order, it becomes possible to go beyond the current and very abstract definitions of law and to analyse more precisely the place of law in a particular social group. If international law has the character of law, its functions can be clarified only by correlating international law with its own particular social environment. Two questions therefore arise: what is the nature of the social substratum of international law and what are the dominant driving forces that determine the actions of groups in the international sphere? In the field of international river law, national and international courts have developed the concept of an international river community, characterized by the common interest of all riparian States in the navigability of such watercourses and by their absolute equality in the rights and obligations of the members of such a regional community. The Barcelona Convention of 1921 extended the benefits of this principle, which the Congress of Vienna had limited to riparian states, to all signatories of this multilateral treaty. While the insistence on national sovereignty over parts of these rivers reduces their value to all to a tipping point, the shift from an atomistic approach to a partnership approach based on an international convention transforms the international law of society into a law of coordination. and the concomitant restriction of national sovereignty on the basis of reciprocity allows for freedom of communication and, in a narrow area, a regional community.