International Law and Cyberlaw: Natural Law, Positivism, and Stephen/“Steven” Hall

The core problem in international law (why this debate matters more here)

In domestic law, positivism can point to a legislature, courts, and enforcement. In international law, there’s no single global sovereign with supreme coercive power—so people ask: in what sense is international law really “law,” and why should states treat it as binding? (This is where natural law vs positivism gets especially sharp.)

A standard starting point is the sources of international law (ICJ Statute Art. 38): treaties, customary international law, general principles of law, plus judicial decisions and scholarly writings as “subsidiary means.

Natural law vs legal positivism in international law

 Natural law (international version)

Claim: Law’s authority ultimately depends on morality/reason. If a rule is radically unjust, it lacks full legal validity (“not truly law,” or at least not fully authoritative).

Common international-law implications:

• Universal human rights are grounded in moral reality, not just state consent.

• Critiques you noted are common: “universal” rights can be attacked as vague or as culturally imperialistic (a worry about exporting one moral worldview).
  

Legal positivism (international version)

Claim: Law and morality are distinct; legal validity depends on social facts like consent, practice, and recognized procedures.

The international-law challenge for positivists:
If law is tied to a sovereign’s commands, then without a sovereign, is international law really law? (A lot of positivist theorizing tries to answer: yes—through consent, institutions, reciprocity, reputational costs, etc.—but the “no sovereign” worry keeps coming back.)

Hall’s thesis (why he thinks international law needs natural-law foundations)

modern international law can’t fully explain its own bindingness without appealing to underlying normative principles. 

Hall’s key moves (mapped to your points)(1) Treaties presuppose an underlying obligation: pacta sunt servanda

Treaties don’t bind just because they’re written down; they bind because we accept a deeper principle: agreements must be kept—and performed in good faith (that’s exactly how the Vienna Convention states it).
Hall’s thought is: this looks like an antecedent normative principle (often treated as “natural law” or “constitutional” in the background), not something you can reduce to brute power. 

(2) Customary international law needs opinio juris (not just habit)

Custom isn’t “states happen to do X a lot.” It requires:

• state practice, plus

• opinio juris = the belief that the practice is followed out of legal obligation.
  That “sense of obligation” is exactly the kind of thing Hall uses to argue that international law has built-in normativity that positivism struggles to treat as purely factual.
  

(3) International law is built from recognized commitments among states

Even on a consent-heavy picture, states treat agreements and norms as rule-like and binding (not merely strategic preferences). This fits the Art. 38 picture: treaties + custom + principles functioning as lawlike sources. 

(4) Human rights talk “collapses” without a natural-law baselineThe idea here: if rights are only what states voluntarily recognize, then “human rights” become too easy to deny whenever a state refuses to sign, ratify, or comply. Hall argues you need some moral foundation to explain why rights claims still have force even against states that reject them

Why “universal” international norms strengthen the natural-law pull (jus cogens)

Some international norms claim higher status than ordinary consent-based rules (often discussed as jus cogens / peremptory norms). Under the Vienna Convention, a treaty is void if it conflicts with a jus cogens norm, and jus cogens is described as accepted/recognized by the international community “as a whole.”
International Law Commission materials commonly discuss prohibitions like genocide and torture as examples of peremptory norms.

This is part of the same pressure point: the system seems to say some things are prohibited regardless of what a particular state wants—which sounds natural-law-ish.

Connecting Hall to Honoré

Honoré’s style of point (as you summarized it) fits international law really well:

• Law inherently makes moral claims (it speaks in terms like obligation, responsibility, rights), even if some regimes use that language cynically.
  
  

• International law especially needs that moral-claim structure, because it doesn’t have a single sovereign’s threat behind it. It relies heavily on claimed legitimacy, reciprocity, and reason-giving.
  
  

So the bridge is:

• Positivism explains where international rules come from (treaty, custom, etc.).
  
  

Hall/Honoré-style thinking explains why they can claim binding authority and why we should evaluate them against critical morality, not just whatever states happen to accept.

Why international law is hard

Why international law is hard

• No global sovereign/enforcer. Positivism struggles here: if law is basically sovereign-backed commands, international law looks “thin,” so you need a better explanation of why it binds.
  

• Treaties presuppose a pre-legal moral principle. Hall argues treaties only work because they rely on pacta sunt servanda (agreements must be kept)—a natural-law-type foundation, not just a written text.
  

• Custom isn’t just habit—it requires a sense of legal duty. Hall emphasizes that customary international law needs opinio juris (states treat the practice as obligatory), which is hard to prove and can’t be reduced to “they usually do it.”
  

Human rights lose their force if they’re only “whatever states consent to.” Hall’s natural-law move: rights discourse collapses if it depends entirely on recognition, because the whole point is to criticize states even when they refuse to recognize rights.

International law: why it needs our attention

Borderless problems need shared rules. Climate change, pandemics, and cyber threats cross borders, so without international law you’re left with fragmented domestic responses and weak coordination.

It sets baseline “must-not-do” limits even against domestic law. It supports universal constraints like bans on atrocities and serious abuses, so “it’s legal at home” doesn’t end the moral/legal question globally.

Hall’s core point: international law matters because it makes real claims of obligation (it isn’t just politics), and modern global governance depends on those claims being intelligible and defensible.