International Legal Evangelism: Intelligence, Reconnaissance & Missions

all the odds. We shouldn’t assume that the sacred and the religious go out the
window when positivism is in the air.
11. Respect for law in the midst of disagreement
I want to finish with one function of natural law that I do recognise. Natural law,
as I said at the beginning, may tell us a little about the limits of international law’s
claims upon us.
In the discussion at the end of Lecture One, George Kateb emphasized that
not every barbaric edict issued by a tyrant in possession of the apparatus of power
counts as law or has the authority of law. There comes a point when an oppressive
edict may be too unjust or too deformed in its character to be accorded legal
authority. And that will apply in the international realm as much as in the
governance of particular communities.
This may be particularly important in cases where international law seems to
prohibit doing what justice and morality urgently require—coming to the aid of a
people who are being slaughtered without mercy, for example. The point is
important and George was right to reproach me for neglecting it. I hadn’t wanted to
linger on such pathological cases, terrible though they may be. I took as my
subject for these lectures the normality, not the pathology of international law: the
sanctity of business as usual.
Let me explain, using an analogy with national law. We know that, as a
result of ordinary political life, values are often enacted into national law which are
not our values. National law does some things which we (some of us) think it
ought not to do, and it leaves undone some things which some of us think it ought
to have done. This disagreement about content is part of the normal life of national
law, whether it is taxes, criminal law, welfare, commerce, or property. And
everyone has to come to terms with it. We share a national legal system wt people
with whom, in good faith, we disagree on these matters of policy, right and justice.
And still law has to have a univocal place among us.
Now Christian thinking has certainly been important for helping us develop
our various ideas about content: what law ought to be, the principles it ought to
embody and the values it ought to serve. It is clear though that Christians do
disagree both among themselves and with their fellow citizens on many of these
issues. So, in addition, we have developed a Christian attitude which accords
some respect to law and the Rule of Law, as such, quite apart from our opinions or
views about its content. We say, sometimes, that the law commands our respect
and compliance even when we disagree with its content, even when we wish its
content were otherwise. And we develop theories which explain that requirement
of respect and compliance—theories which represent Christian views on the Rule
of Law as such. That’s the force of Romans 13: submit yourselves to the powers
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