The Philosophy of Law: Public Right, §§ 59 and 60: The Rights of Peace; Right as against an Unjust Enemy
Public Right, §§ 59 and 60: The Rights of Peace; Right as against an Unjust Enemy
The Rights of Peace are: —
1. The Right to be in Peace when War is in the neighbourhood, or the Right of Neutrality.
. The Right to have Peace secured so that it may continue when it has been concluded, that is, the Right of Guarantee.
. The Right of the several States to enter int.. „ mutual Allmnce, so as to defend themselves in common unst all external or even internal attacks. This Right of Federation, however, does not extend to the formation of any League for external aggression or internal aggrandizement.
The Hight of a State against an unjust Enemy has no limits, at least in respect of quality as distinguished from quantity or degree. In other words, the injured State may use—not, indeed, any means, but yet—all those means that are permissible and in reasonable measure in so far as they are in its power, in order to assert its 1 tight to what is its own. But what then is an unjust enemy according to the conceptions of the right of Nations, when, as holds generally of the state of Nature, every State is judge in its own cause? It is one whose publicly expressed Will, whether in word or deed, betrays u maxim which, if it were taken as a universal rule, would make a state of Peace among the nations impossible, and would necessarily perpetuate the state of Nature. Such is the violation of public Treaties, with regard to which it may be assumed that any such violation concerns all nations by threatening their free dom, and that they are thus summoned to unite against such a wrong, and to take away the power of committing it. But this does not include the right to partition and appropriate the country, so as to make a State as it were disappear from the earth; for this would be an injustice to the people of that State, who cannot lose their original Right to unite into a Commonwealth, and to adopt such a new Constitution as by its nature would be unfavourable to the inclination for war.
Further, it may be said that the expression ‘an unjust enemy in the state of Nature’ is pleonastic; for the state of Nature is itself a state of injustice. A just Enemy would be one to whom I would do wrong in offering resistance; but such a one would really not be my Enemy.