Dissident Voices 279an exceptional case, Mill argued, third states would be justifi ed in forcibly
intruding into the confl ict to compel a settlement.
Even these narrow exceptions to the general principle of nonintervention,
however, failed to gain ac cep tance among international lawyers. Th e domi-
nant positivist position held that aid to insurgents in civil confl icts was fl atly
unlawful. Th is principle was confi rmed in a resolution of the Institute of
International Law (a body of international law scholars) in 1900. Th e fur-
thest that mainstream positivist lawyers were prepared to go was to concede
that, in certain exceptional conditions, there might be a moral case for hu-
manitarian intervention, but not a legal one.
Liberalism therefore, for all of its achievements in some walks of life in
the nineteenth century, made comparatively little impact on international
law. Its triumphs generally occurred at the levels of individual states or of
bilateral treaties. In some respects, though, its foundation was solid. Eco-
nomic liberalism and ideas of fundamental human rights would both have a
large part to play in future.
Th e Sentiment of Nationality
If liberalism had its roots in natural law, another of the heterodoxical
schools had a close affi nity with the historical school. Th is was the doctrine
that became known as the nationality doctrine, or sometimes as the Italian
School in honor of the country where it attained its greatest hold. We have
noted already the basic tenets of the historical school of law: the belief that
law is a product and expression of the par tic u lar historical and cultural ex-
perience of individual societies, rather than a system of universal and eter-
nal norms. Th e historical school therefore supported and reinforced positiv-
ism in its rejection of natural law.
Where the nationality school parted company with positivism was in its
rejection of the positivist fi xation on states as the fundamental units of inter-
national law. It contended instead— as its name implies— that the funda-
mental unit is the nation, which was defi ned as, ultimately, a cultural com-
munity. A nation was seen as a collectivity of people who are bound together
most conspicuously by a shared language, but who also possess a common
historical and cultural heritage, in such forms as shared folklore, religious