Building Anew 415specifi c topic was “Scientifi c Power and International Law.” As an added
bonus, Henri Donnedieu de Vabres, the French judge at the Nuremberg Tri-
als, lectured on the new developments in international criminal law.
Speaking generally, it must be said that international legal writing in the
post- 1945 era did not equal that of the more intellectually heroic ages of the
nineteenth century or of the interwar period. It principally continued along
lines already marked out. To some extent, this was because the same persons
continued to be active as in the prewar period. Th ere was not a transition
between generations of lawyers aft er 1945 to the extent that there had been
aft er the First World War. Lauterpacht, for example, had been active before
the war, but he became increasingly prominent aft erward as a champion of
liberalism— and a leading fi gure in the profession generally. Manley Hudson
also continued on the scene, serving on the I.L.C. Kelsen was still productive
aft er the war, as were Kunz, Verdross, Scelle, Schwarzenberger, and Wright.
De Visscher served on the World Court in 1946– 52, as did Wellington Koo
in 1957– 67, and Verdross as a judge on the Eu ro pe an Court of Human Rights.
Th ere were even two men who had begun their careers prior to 1914 and
continued to be active aft er 1945. One was Álvarez, who was elevated to the
World Court aft er the war. Th e other was Erich Kaufmann. He returned to
Germany aft er his exile in the Nazi period and became a legal adviser to the
West German foreign ministry and also to the chancellor’s offi ce, principally
advising on legal aspects of the occupation and partition of Germany. He was
now a widely revered elder statesman of the profession. From his early days
as a neo- Hegelian, he had made the longest intellectual odyssey of all.
Th e Continuing Hold of Positivism
Positivism was far from dead in the post- 1945 world. In fact, it could even be
said to have gained renewed strength from the Cold War atmosphere, forti-
fi ed by the strong support of lawyers from the socialist countries. Starting in
force in the 1960s, lawyers from newly in de pen dent countries also tended to
swell the positivist ranks.
Within positivism, some of the fault lines of the past remained evident.
Th e common- will variant had largely faded as a separate school of thought,
but the empirical and the voluntarist approaches were still alive. Th e empiri-
cal perspective was little changed from the nineteenth century. In the words