The Continuing Influence of Kelsen on the General Perception of the Discipline of International Law 5 Conclusion In this short essay it is only possible to suggest hypotheses about the impact of Kelsen upon international law thinking. It remains important, in the absence of a magnum opus of historical research, to avoid categorical statements and conclusions concerning the exact influence of Kelsen upon subsequent international law doctrine. However, it appears that the outcome of Kelsen's thought is so well represented by Lauterpacht and in a way very far indeed from the lucidity of his arch-nihilist colleague. To take the step from asserting that lawyers can only work, in a nihilist age, with a totally instrumental view of law - as a formal system of rules effectively sanctioned - to claiming that international society furnishes such instrumentalist legal materials, through the activity of an international judiciary, is to fall prey to sheer intellectual confusion in the face of the continued presence of the brutal factual power of states. Lauterpacht represents a common belief in the profession that the international legislature, executive and judiciary are, so to speak, just around the corner. They would be the marks of what Kelsen means by saying that a state order is a mere form of words for a juridical order as such. As Hedley Bull has pointed out, this is a classical form of intellectual denial and escapism. With Lauterpacht's overstretched faith in the imminent, because so strongly willed, arrival of the international judiciary, the logic of international law simply bursts.
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