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life, thus has a decidedly prescriptive character meant to reconceptualize notions of just war and
natural law in moral terms compatible with a right of self-government inhering in society and
undiminished even by the dissolution of the government. The basic constituent elements of
Locke’s international order are societies.
Whereas sovereignty is qualified or contingent on adherence to the natural law principle
of non-aggression, the inherent right of self-government is absolute. However, this right is
absolute only in the negative sense that one society must not be governed arbitrarily or
permanently by another without its consent. It is a right of non-domination rather than an
absolute right in the positive sense of a right to have a particular form of government or rule by
specific individuals.
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The salutary consequences of lawful conquest may include the destruction
and punishment of criminal leaders and even the elimination of aggressive regimes. In the harsh
school of lawful conquest, societies may be instructed about the kinds of governments to which a
people mindful of the natural law should consent (Josephson 2002: 190-6). In this sense, the
inherent right of a society to govern itself is integrally linked to the framework of norms
governing the international realm that may guide reasoned consent. Self-government as a right
of non-domination contains the immanent causality of political independence, but it does not
necessitate full sovereignty in the immediate sense.
There is also a distinct conventional or legitimist dimension to Locke’s conception of
international society. As several commentators have observed, Locke, unlike his immediate
predecessor Hugo Grotius, did not advance any substantive notion of the “law of nations” (ius
gentium), an inductively established body of norms and general principles of law recognized in
many different communities (Cox 1960: 140-6; Ahrensdorf and Pangle 1999: 162-7; Nardin
2002: 58). For Locke, the law of nature constitutes the only class of universally enforceable laws
Convention