Is there justice in international society? In this article, I review the propositions on international justice by the most renowned scholars in this field and recent development of international criminal court. Hugo Grotious derived international justice from natural law and he argued that international law is a part of natural law. But, his natural law is not divine, but secular. It is derived from human reasons. To Grotius, justice in international society means being in accordance with international law.
However, Hobbes denied the relevance of international law in international society and taught political realism. To Hobbes, in this world, there is no law or justice, no conception of right or wrong, no morality, but only a struggle for survival in a state of war by every state and against every state.
At the outset of the twentieth century, the "paradigm" for international legal positivism was expounded by Lassa Oppenheim. International legal positivism was based on the extant and recognized rules of international law as set forth in the customary practice of states and in the formal conventions concluded between them, instead of on philosophical speculations about some nonexistent law of nature or natural law.
Professor Francis A. Boyle suggested "Legal-Moral Imperative" theory. Under this theory, a rule of international law that was qualified and ambiguous at its origin had become, by virtue of time and experience, an absolute legal-moral obligation that must be obeyed even during a severe international crisis when the very survival of the state itself was deemed to be at stake. For example, as a legal-moral imperative, the rule of the 1907 Convention on the Opening of Hostilities was able to head off the initially favored "surprise surgical air strike" on Soviet missile sites in Cuba.
Professor John Rawls suggested "Law of Peoples" which mean a particular political conception of right and justice that applies to the principles and norms of international law and practice. Following Kant's idea in Perpetual Peace (1795), he is to begin with to social contract idea of the liberal political conception of a constitutionally democratic regime and then extend it by introducing a second original position at the second level in which the representatives of liberal peoples make an agreement with other liberal peoples and later with nonliberal though decent peoples. Through these agreements, he expects the great evils of human history - unjust war and oppression, religious persecution, genocide and mass murder etc. - will eventually disappear.
The International Criminal Court (ICC) is the first permanent international criminal court which deals with crime of genocide, crime against humanity, war crime and crime of aggression. The ICC pursues the individual criminal responsibility of those who commit the most heinous international crimes. The ICC will play a very important role in bringing justice in international society.