Dreams Born and Shattered 379His theory largely echoed that of Wolff in the eigh teenth century— and,
before him, the rationalist theory of Aquinas from the Middle Ages. He
insisted on the existence of “an objective justice,... in de pen dent of man.”
He also stressed that law must take full account of the double nature of hu-
man beings: as material beings, on the one hand, and as moral and spiritual
beings on the other. Th e moral aspect was seen as the more fundamental.
His system was broadly axiomatic in character, in that natural law was seen
to be founded on, ultimately, two basic duties: to honor commitments freely
entered into, and to repair any injury resulting from an unjust act. Th ese
core principles are transcendental, timeless, and universal. Th e application
of them to par tic u lar historical or cultural circumstances is another matter,
and this is dealt with by what Le Fur called the “rational law.” Th is rational
law determined the specifi c content of laws in individual societies, and it
was a human creation. Finally, the task of positive law was to implement
natural law by providing for sanctions against violators. Th e similarity to
the medieval emanationist theory of the ius gentium, as well as to Wolff ’s
concept of voluntary law, is clear.
Th e outstanding natural- law advocate in the German- speaking world was
the Austrian lawyer Alfred Verdross. He began as a prominent member of
the Vienna School. As such, he demonstrated how easily the gap between the
Vienna School and natural law could be bridged. In essence, nothing more
was required than an alteration in the basic norm that undergirded the Vi-
enna School’s normative system. In place of Kelsen’s basic norm of the law-
creating power of custom, Verdross substituted what he called the general
sense of justice. Th is general idea of justice, Verdross believed, was an ascer-
tainable, objective, universal conception, eternally valid and applicable to
all cultures. Perspectives on, or ideas about, this fundamental sense of jus-
tice admittedly varied across cultures, but “the absolute value of justice” it-
self was universal.
Verdross’s conception of natural law was essentially organicist, in the
sense that it was not seen as something transcendental or set apart from hu-
man nature, in the manner of mathematical axioms. Instead, it was seen as a
sort of collective inner conscience of the international community. As such,
the sense of justice underlay and suff used positive law. He spoke of “ante-
rior” and “posterior” law, with anterior being the fundamental principles of
natural law, and posterior law— that is, state- created positive law— being