The pursuit of justice

¶ … pursuit of Justice

Paine's ideas, as compared to Golda Meir's memoir, must first be regarded with respect to time and the centuries in-between. As we can see, Paine wrote in the 18th century, in political and social conditions somewhat different from those in the mid 1900s when Golda Meir gave his considerations on new nations and independence. If we consider the world as it was in the 18th century, international law, where the state is the main subject of law, was but at the very beginning. We had already seen the evolvement of powerful nations (France, Great Britain, Holland) in the previous century, states who had already gained their independence and, even more important, their suzerainty. These were the players of the international political stage, noticeably very few. This context was proper for the evolvement of new nations and new states, as many of these had already founded colonies in other continents. As such, Paine's ideas of new nations and new states may be considered essentially different from those that Golda Meir wrote about in the 20th century.

However, Paine's ideas make up most of the basic and fundamental principles of international law. The first idea, that all man are equal as they were all made by God, who made no distinction between them, excepting the gender distinction ("male and female created he them"). This idea can and is transposed to state and nation level in international law, giving birth to a principle that says that all countries and states are equal on the international politics stage. In this sense, every state has the right to fulfill its own ideas, in an environment regulated by international law principles.

The second important idea we should draw from Paine's text with regard to nations and peoples is that every nation has the right to self-determination. In this sense, every nation has the right to form a state where it can apply its own rules and elect its own government. From international law, a state is defined as having three main elements that can prove its existence: territory, population and a government. In Paine's times, a population that gained a territory (thus, independence in that respective territory) could then elect a government and be a state with all rights and obligations deriving form this.

Notice that the government, in Paine's text, is someone who represents the people, the people choosing to delegate some of is natural rights to the government, who can best achieve and enforce these rights.