ABSTRACT
This chapter aims to examine the relations between international law and international systems, first in general terms and subsequently in more concrete form with evidence derived from history. International law is one of the aspects of international politics that reflect most sharply the essential differences between domestic and world affairs. The international system is both an analytic scheme and a postulate. It is a way in which the scholar tries to give structure and meaning to a complex and confusing mass of data. The fundamental flaw of the formula is in the ambiguous nature of international organization: it is an "as if" international community, which leaves the basic character of the world system unchanged and in which decisions are still made by states. The other effort was a direct projection into the international sphere of the legal relationships that exist between groups or individuals in a constitutional state.
