ABSTRACT
The law of nations was for Edmund Burke the first qualification of the Natural Law, in the process of applying its eternal and universal moral imperatives to the concrete, practical political affairs of men and nations. Burke assumed the two traditional conceptions of the law of nations as part of his philosophy of history and politics, and he applied them to the great international conflicts brought on by the American and French revolutions. Burke's predecessors and contemporaries not only distinguished between an international and constitutional conception of the law of nations, but like Burke himself, they regarded both conceptions not as contrary to, but as necessary derivative parts of, the Natural Law. One of the greatest omissions in scholarship on Burke has been the failure to consider vital position of the law of nations in his political philosophy. Burke was in the tradition of Suarez and Grotius in conceiving the law of nations as not only international, but also constitutional.
