The Philosophy of Law: Public Right, § 43: Definition and Division of Public Right
PUBLIC RIGHT embraces the whole of the Laws that require to be universally promulgated in order to produce a juridical state of Society. It is therefore a System of those Laws that are requisite for a People as a multitude of men forming a Nation, or for a number of Nations, in their relations to each other. Men and Nations, on account of their mutual influence on one another, require a juridical Constitution uniting them under one Will, in order that they may participate in what is right.—This relation of the Individuals of a Nation to each other, constitutes THE CIVIL UNION in the social state; and, viewed as a whole in relation to its constituent members, it forms THE POLITICAL STATE (Civitas).
1. The State, as constituted by the common interest of all to live in a juridical union, is called, in view of its form, the COMMONWEALTH or the REPUBLIC in the wider sense of the term (Res puUica latins sic dicta). The Principles of Right in this sphere, thus constitute the first department of Public Right as the RIGHT OF THE STATE (jus Civitatis) or National Right.—2. The State, again, viewed in relation to other peoples, is call(d a Power (potentia), whence arises the idea of Potentates. Viewed in relation to the supposed hereditary unity of the people composing it, the State constitutes a Nation (gens). Under the general conception of Public Right, in addition to the Right of the individual State, there thus arises another department of Right, constituting the RIGHT OF NATIONS (jus gentium) or International Right.—3. Further, as the surface of the earth is not unlimited in extent, but is circumscribed into a unity, National Right and International Right necessarily culminate in the idea of a UNIVERSAL RIGHT OF MANKIND, which may be called ‘Cosmopolitical Right’ (jus cosmopoliticum). And National, International, and Cosmopolitical Right are so interconnected, that if any one of these three possible forms of the juridical Relation fails to embody the essential Principles that ought to regulate external freedom by law, the structure of Legislation reared by the others will also be undermined, and the whole System would at last fall to pieces.