Dissident Voices 293international community that was presently based on it would ultimately
become a de jure one.Relations with the Other Schools
Solidarism had strong ties to natural law. A central feature of natural law
had always been its universalist outlook— with its insistence that the whole
of humanity constitutes, ultimately, a single moral and ethical community.
Th is idea was also at the very core of solidarism. Th e two approaches were
also united in their common refusal to accord a central role to state sover-
eignty. Duguit was especially outspoken on this point. Law, he insisted, is a
not a product of government promulgation. It is an expression of the social
bonds that unite the people of any given society. Th ose are the primary forces
in legal life, with government and its various actions being simply their prod-
uct or expression. Government, in other words, is merely epiphenomenal.
Society itself is the fundamental reality and the font of legal norms. So sig-
nifi cant is the connection between solidarism and natural law that there is
not always agreement as to which category to place certain writers in. Kalten-
born, for example, has sometimes been identifi ed as a pioneer of the solidar-
ists. Lorimer also had a pronounced affi nity with the solidarists, in his
stress on the interdependence of states.
Th ere were some important diff erences, though, between solidarism and
natural law. Th e principal one was the strong commitment of solidarism to
the idea of law as a product of social forces and relationships, and not as an
embodiment of eternal truths. In this key respect, solidarism had more in
common with the historical school of law than it did with natural law. But
here too, there were some key diff erences. Where the historical writers fo-
cused chiefl y on cultural matters such as language, literature, and national
consciousness generally, the solidarists placed greater emphasis on economic
factors such as industrialization and technological advancement. Also, the
historical school stressed the uniqueness of various diff erent societies, while
the solidarist focus was on interdependence and transnational ties.
Solidarism shared one vital common feature with liberalism: its focus on
human welfare rather than on the sovereign rights of states. Th e principal
diff erence between the two was that the solidarist outlook was basically col-
lectivist in character, where the liberal one was individualistic. Th e solidarists,