The Politics of International Law Martti Koskenniemi * I. The Flight from Politics It may be a matter of some controversy among historians as to when one should date the beginning of the modem states-system. 1 Less open to debate, however, is that somehow the idea of such a system is historically as well as conceptually linked with that of an international Rule of Law. In a system whose units are as- sumed to serve no higher purpose than their own interests and which assumes the perfect equality of those interests, the Rule of Law seems indeed the sole thinkable principle of organization - short of the bellum omnium. Since the publication of Emmerich de Vattel's Droit des gens ou principes de la loi naturelle appliquies d la conduite et aux affaires des nations et des souverains (1758), jurists have written about international matters by assuming that the liberal principles of the Enlight- enment and their logical corollary, the Rule of Law, could be extended to apply in the organization of international society just as they had been used in the domestic one. 2 Notwithstanding the historical difficulty with dates and origins, the connexion between the Rule of law and the principles of the Enlightenment appear evident. Of Permanent Mission of Finland to the United Nations. For example, A.F. von der Heydte: Geburtstunde des souverSnen Staates (19S2) suggests the turn of the 14th century, 41-43, while F.H. Hinsley: Power and the Pursuit of Peace.(1962), 153, argues that one cannot properly speak of a states-system until the 18th century. The analogy is explicit in JJ. Rousseau: The Social Contract (trans. & in trod, by Maurice Cranston) (1986) Bk.I Ch. 7 at 63; J. Locke, Two Treatises on Government (intr. by W.S. Car- penter) (1984) Second Treatise, sect. 183 at 211. For commentary, see, e.g., P. Vinogradoff, Historical Types of International Law (1920), 55-57; E.D. Dickinson, The Equality of States in International Law (1920), 29-31, 49-50, 97-98. 111-113. See also M. Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars (1980), 58-63; C.L. Beitz, Political Theory and International Relations (1979) 74. For useful analysis of the effect of the analogy to the conception of a state's (territorial) rights, see A. Carty, The Decay of International Law? (1986) 44-46, 55-56. 1EJ1L(199O)4