ABSTRACT
One reason for the increased interest in alternatives to the Grotian notion of international law and relations is reflected in the problem of intervention, humanitarian intervention, in the internal affairs of what are termed failed states. Intervention, even justified as humanitarian, raises a legal issue. In terms of Grotian international law, Somalia is a sovereign state and therefore subject to no external authority unless voluntarily accepted. The notion that states are sovereign, that is, free from any outside authority and jurisdiction, is a concept that developed in the Middle Ages as a response to jurisdictional claims made by the Holy Roman Emperors. Grotius and the diplomats at Westphalia shared the medieval notion of a world community, and they also assumed the medieval notion of social and political development from the primitive hunter-gatherer societies to the advanced civilized societies of Christian Europe.
