international law

Body of rules generally accepted as governing the relations between countries, pioneered by Hugo Grotius, especially in matters of human rights, territory, and war.

Neither the League of Nations nor the United Nations proved able to enforce international law, successes being achieved only when the law coincided with the aims of a predominant major power – for example, in the Korean War. The scope of the law is now extended to space – for example, the 1967 treaty that (among other things) banned nuclear weapons from space.