Breaking with the Past 249various rules. Th e current state of international law was readily acknowl-
edged to be primitive in that the range of agreement between states was, as
yet, fairly limited.
Th is consensualist thesis had a further immediate consequence: if there
was no rule prohibiting a given course of conduct, then that conduct must be
deemed permissible. Th is conclusion would later be given the grand- sounding
label of the “principle of freedom”— referring, of course, to the freedom of
states, not of individuals. It may be observed that this “principle of freedom”
is a kind of negative counterpart of the idea of fundamental rights of states.
Th e fundamental rights thesis posited that certain positive rights belong to
states, as a matter of law. Th e “principle of freedom” merely holds that, if no
rule of law exists regarding some matter, then states are left free to do as they
like. But both of these notions clearly refl ect the centrality of state will and
state sovereignty.
Th is consensual, or contractual, picture of international law was summed
up by the apt expression that international law must be seen as a law between
states rather than as a law above states. In another common formulation,
positivist international law was stated to be a law of coordination rather than
a law of subordination.
Th e Nature of International Society
A contractual image of international law, combined with the general plural-
istic ethos of positivism, strongly implies a fragmented world— a congeries
of diff erent contractual groups without any overall framework or guidance.
Th ere might be a high degree of coherence within various self- selected groups.
But it would be diffi cult to claim that, in the absence of some kind of universal
system (such as natural law), there could be a true international community
comprising all of the states of the world. Wolff could envisage a global “su-
preme state,” but only by invoking natural law to bring it about. Positivists
did not have access to that form of assistance.
Th ere was actually some division among the three variants of positivism
on this point. Furthest removed from any conception of an international
community were the voluntarists, with their emphasis on the in de pen dent
wills of individual states. Th e empiricists were the nearest to accepting some
notion of a genuine international society, since the very idea of customary