International law, translated from the Latin jus gentium, was first applied in the Roman Empire. Roman international law originally sought to regulate conduct between Roman citizens and those of other Roman-controlled territories. Today, the term refers to the body of law that promotes equal treatment between different nation-states as well as between people of different nations. The modern intellectual tradition of international law and treaties owes much to Roman law. The Roman term jus gentium, international law, described rules of law that generally referred to foreigners when certain foreign rules were unknown or in conflict. These are rules that were considered so fundamental that they were shared by all nations. Therefore, like natural law, it has been assumed that international law exists without positive expression, for example in legislation. In Roman law, jus gentium was generally used in legal cases involving private transactions, such as marriage, wills, and commerce. At least the first part of Grotius` ius gentium theory was soon married to the emerging political theory of the seventeenth century, such as that of Hobbes, which postulated the idea of sovereign states. Grotius` consensual theory of international law helps explain why treaties such as the Peace of Westphalia, which ended the Thirty Years` War in 1648, are legally binding: sovereign states have the power both to enact internal rules for their own territory and to issue rules for themselves through intergovernmental agreements abroad. Grotius` legal theory also explains why sovereign states should not interfere in the internal affairs of other sovereign states: the sovereign authority of one nation must be limited in order to protect the sovereign authority of other states.
These principles of international law, which bind sovereign States to international law, still guide international relations today. When comparing the laws of nations around the world, the overwhelming conclusion is that many countries are not tackling the problem of cybercrime because they do not have legislation that specifically addresses it, while others have been more aggressive than the United States in addressing these issues. As we have seen in this book, many computer-related crimes are variations of old themes. For example, a country may have child pornography laws in its books and make no difference whether the illegal material is distributed in print or digital form. The fact that the crime is now being committed on the Internet is just another way of doing something that is already illegal. In these cases, existing laws may apply to a person who commits the crime, regardless of whether a computer is involved. With the reign of 1756, the British had tried to prevent the trade of neutral ships between the colonies and the metropolises. In practice, this would have prevented American ships from trading between the West Indies and France. [13] Vattel did not fully adopt the British approach, which distinguished between trade with the enemy (neutral) and trade for the enemy (considered smuggling), nor did he fully subscribe to the French principle of “free ships, free goods.” On the contrary, Vattel proposed only a few limited trade restrictions in international law, obliging states to trade with both belligerents in order to maintain their neutral status, but rejected any obligation for neutral states to cease operations. In addition, neutral nations have been encouraged to accept that certain types of property may be justly confiscated by belligerents, and such seizures should not be interpreted as acts of war. [12] [14] This idea continued to be influential in Rome, in the time of Marcus Aurelius and beyond. During the Empire, however, Stoicism served primarily as a moral guide for individuals rather than a system of social thought.
While concepts of natural law survived, they were relegated to a lesser role in thought and action during the imperial period. Instead, international law has evolved to take into account the diversity of customs, politics, and military security that served as the legal basis for maintaining Rome`s hegemony. Of course, not all students were satisfied with their teachers; One of the first students of the famous English law professor William Blackstone rebelled against what he was taught about international law. In 1789, Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832) rejected Blackstone`s term “international law”; Bentham argued in An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation that discipline should be renamed international law.