Page:The binding force of international law; inaugural lecture in international law at the London School of Economics and Political Science. Session 1910-11 (IA bindingforceofin00higgrich).pdf/14

 imperceptible and hardly worth mentioning, termed the usages of international law." This manner of looking at International Law is not confined to any one class of the community. International lawyers are told often enough that the rules they expound have none of the requirements of Positive Law, that apart from rules based on treaties, the rest are merely moral aspirations, and as for the treaties themselves, there is no permanence in them and no power to enforce their observance. Now it may be as well at once to admit that viewing International Law from the standpoint of students adopting the principles of Hobbes and Austin it lacks the marks of Positive Law which they predicate. There is no superior lawgiver (but Hague Conferences contain the embryo of a possible International legislature), no International Court (though that deficiency is gradually being made good), no International policeman, no definite punishment for breaches of the rules, self-help is the only remedy. Notwithstanding the absence of these factors I am prepared to contend that the body of