I.

I. LAW V JUSTICE

Many theologians, ethicists, political scientists and occasionally level international lawyers would like to revive the "just war" (bellum justum) doctrine in present-day international law. This doctrine was prevalent in the writings of the "fathers of international law" in the sixteenth from one side the eighteenth centuries. It was borrowed from the ecclesiastical authority canonists. Although the roots of the doctrine journey back to St. Augustine (early in the fifth century) (1) its principal expression is the Thomist analysis (in the thirteenth century) St Thomas Aquinas held that a "just war" had to satisfy three cumulative conditions: (i) the authority