Book Review: International Law and Organization: Morality and the Law
| Author | D. T. Anderson |
| Date | 01 March 1967 |
| Published date | 01 March 1967 |
| DOI | 10.1177/002070206702200115 |
| Subject Matter | Book Review |
BOOK
REVIEWS
99
International
Law
and
Organization
MoRALrry
AND
THE
LAw.
By
Samuel
Enoch
Stumpf.
1966.
(Nashville:
Vanderbilt
University
Press.
xiv
247pp.
$5.00)
In
this
short
and
readable
book,
Professor
Stumpf tackles
some
of
the
problems
of
the
relationship
between
law and
morality,
the
difficulty
of
which
is
shown
by
their
persistence.
He
has
little
trouble
in
supporting the
commonplace
assertions
that
law and
morality
may have
similar
content,
that
the
language
and
form
of
legal and
moral
rules
may
be
similar,
and
that
moral
standards
guide
those
making
law.
The
main thesis
is
that
there
is some
necessary
connection
between
law
and
morality.
Most of
the
questions
raised
will
be
familiar
to
students
of
juris-
prudence.
What
is
notable
is
the
organization
of
the
discussion.
In
the
first three
chapters, the
author
exanunes
three
well-known
theories
of
law*
American
realist"
"communist"
and
"imperative"
Each
of
these,
he
claims,
"was
originally
designed
to
show
that
there
is
a
separation
between
law and
morality"
but "not
even
in
terms
of
these
theories
themselves
can
such
a
separation
be
demonstrated
or
sustained"
These
chapters
contain
many
valuable
comments,
no
less
interesting
because
some
have
been
made
more
fully
elsewhere. Though he
writes carefully,
the
author
does
not
always
avoid
the danger
of
caricaturing
those
theories he
wishes
to
discuss;
in
particular,
it
may
be
doubted
whether
an
entirely
accurate
impression
is
given
of
the
place
of
force in
John
Austin's
concept
of
law.
The
fourth
chapter
is
a
brief
study
of
inter-
national
law,
designed
to
demonstrate
the
theory
of
Sir
H.
Lauterpacht
that
"in
the
international order,
as
in
the
internal
order,
human
values
are
the
final
reason
for
the
rule
of
law.
Founded
upon
the
moral
con-
ceptions
which
are
the
essence
of
civilisation,
they
impose
themselves
upon
the
State
whose
mission
is
to
assure
them
protection
and
free
development.
Confessed
positivists
claim
that
their
studies
of
the
structure
of
legal
systems complement, not
exclude,
inquiries
into
pur-
pose
and
value
in
law.
Stumpf,
however,
argues
that
the
positivist
"definition
of
law
is
essentially
a
doctrine
of
the
source
of
law"
which
in
international
law has had
the
rmschievous
consequence of
elevating
to undue
prominence
that
fictitious
creature
the
sovereign
state,
with
its
assumed
personal
attributes
of
purpose
and
will.
The
metaphor
of
the
state
as
a
person
is
imperfect,
Stumpf
notes
acutely
in
that
for
human
persons
in
a
society,
"the
condition
on
which
one
is
respected
is
that
everybody
must
be
respected"
but
that
though
"the
doctrine
of
state
sovereignty
may
imply
this,
it
is
never
stated
this
way,
it
is
always formulated
in
a
unilateral
sense
Nonetheless,
it
has
tyrannized
men's
minds
to
such
a
degree
that
the
interests
and
aspira-
tions
of
human
beings
have not
properly
been
recognised
as
the
true
base
for
an
enduring
world
legal
order.
The
fifth
chapter
offers
a
re-
examination
of
the
views of
Hobbes,
who,
it
is
claimed, believed
the
legal order
to
be
rooted
in
morality,
though his assessment
of
the
irreducible
moral
element
in
law
was
minimal
because of
the
rather
low
view
he
took of
human
nature.
In
the
final
chapter,
the
author
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