The Juristic Conception of the State

Abstract

A society of human individuals viewed as a politically organized unit is termed a state. The state, which, in its various activities and forms of organization, furnishes the material for political science, may be regarded from a number of standpoints. It may be studied sociologically as one of the factors as well as one of the results of communal life; it may be examined historically for the purpose of ascertaining the part which it has played in the life of humanity, its varying phases of development being traced and their several causes and results determined; it may be considered as an entity, to the existence and activities of which are to be applied the ethical criteria which the moralist and philosopher establish; it may be psychologically surveyed in order to make plain the manifestations of will, emotion and judgment which support and characterize its life; it may be regarded from the purely practical standpoint to determine how it may be most efficiently organized and operated; and, finally, it may be envisaged and studied simply as an instrumentality for the creation and enforcement of law. It is with the state, as viewed in this last aspect, that analytical political philosophy is concerned.The point of departure of the analytical jurist is that in all communities which have reached any degree of definite political organization, public affairs, whether domestic or international, are not carried on in a haphazard manner, without system or fixed principles, but are governed by bodies of rules logically related to one another and all depending, as deductive conclusions, upon certain assumptions regarding the juristic nature of the state, of its sovereignty, of its law, and of the relations which it bears towards other bodies politic as similarly viewed.

On the History and Historiography of International Relations

“…Many of those writing during the interwar period understood that sovereignty and anarchy were inextricably associated with, and mutually constitutive of, each other, and this explains why much of the interwar discourse focused on the concept of state sovereignty. The juristic theory of the state, which during the early 1900s was the most influential paradigm for the study of political science, depicted the international milieu as one where states led an independent and isolated existence (Willoughby, 1918). Proponents of juristic theory evoked the precontractual image of individuals living in a state of nature to describe the external condition of states and drew many of the same pessimistic conclusions that realists have made about politics conducted in the absence of a central authority.…”

Anarchy, World Politics and the Birth of a Discipline: American International Relations, Pluralist Theory and the Myth of Interwar Idealism

“…Willoughby argued that 'the prime characteristic of the state is that there is posited of it a will that is legally supreme' and 'this supreme legally legitimizing will is termed sovereignty'. 38 Sovereignty was the constitutive principle of the state and a major topic of concern to political scientists. Willoughby announced 'what the term "Value" is to the science of political economy, the term "Sovereignty" is to political science'.…”