Dissident Voices 267ground of infringement of the rights of humanity: those promoting or pro-
tecting slavery, those refusing rights to foreigners, those infringing the free-
dom of the seas, and those persecuting certain religions. Two other kinds of
treaty would be void for violation of international (i.e., natural) law: those
providing for world domination by a single power, and those directed to-
ward the violent suppression of another state. Bluntschli, in other words,
gave the fi rst forthright account of what later international lawyers would
refer to as “peremptory norms” of international law— norms that, because of
their intrinsic importance, have a higher status than ordinary customary or
treaty law.
Th e second major spokesman for natural law was James Lorimer, from
Scotland, a close contemporary of Bluntshli’s. He studied fi rst at the Uni-
versity of Edinburgh and then in continental Eu rope, where his chief inter-
est was in the natural sciences. He later remarked that he learned more law
from his chemistry teacher than from his law professors. He practiced law
for a time in Scotland (without success) and then gravitated into academic
life, becoming professor of law at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland
and taking the chair of the law of nature and nations in 1862.
Lorimer was an heir— perhaps the last one— to the Scottish tradition of
“commonsense” philosophy of the eigh teenth century. A devoutly religious
man, he dutifully placed God at the pinnacle of international law. He re-
sembled Bluntschli— whom he greatly admired— in being more of the or-
ganicist turn of mind than the rationalist. Appropriately, he was an admirer of
the ancient stoics. Toward the historical school, he formed a special antipa-
thy. In his Institutes of International Law, published in 1883, he announced
that his goal was “to place International Law on deeper and more stable foun-
dations than... convention” (i.e., the consent of states). More specifi cally, he
sought explicitly to base international law on “a science of nature.”
Unlike Bluntschli, Lorimer was a forthright critic of positivism, deriding
it as “objectless groping amongst lifeless facts and life- destroying fi ctions.”
In short, he scornfully asserted, “the positivist pistol has no lead in it.” He
bluntly asserted positive law to be “merely declaratory”— meaning that it is
merely a summation of law, and not legally binding in its own right. It was
also of relatively recent vintage. Natural law, in contrast, has existed between
nations since the very dawn of history itself. Positivism was disdained as
mere “empirical jurisprudence,” capable of producing only “a haphazard