Emmerich de Vattel (1714–69) wrote that individual nation-states are equal, independent, and hold their own rights. The 1648 Treaty of Westphalia ushered in a new era of international law defined by the Law of Nations. Indigenous rights receded from the international arena and became part of the domestic affairs of states in the late seventeenth century. Carpenter, in International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences (Second Edition), 2015 The Formation of the Modern International Legal System In this regard, positive law exhibits the characteristics of an observable social fact, located in time and space. Norms of positive law are thus tied to the actual behavior of legal officials, often subject to deliberate change and confined to a particular jurisdiction.

But unlike social norms, legal systems are formal institutions administered according to rules by specialized legal officials acting in legal capacities on behalf of legally structured organizations like legislatures and courts. Legal norms share this property with informal social norms, and like them, legal systems usually react to noncompliance with some form of explicit sanctions ( McAdams and Rasmusen, 2007). Without a social practice supporting it, positive law ceases to exist. Different to norms endorsed in ideologies or philosophical theories, legal norms are necessarily grounded in and emerge from actual social practices of particular collectivities. International law, however, with its imperfectly coordinated international regimes, often lacks hierarchical integration. Legal orders are often, but not necessarily, organized hierarchically, like the legal systems of nation-states, which are united by a common constitution and divided, e.g., into federal law, state law, municipal law. In most cases, legal orders also comprise explicit meta-norms on the creation, change, adjudication and enforcement of primary rules, in particular norms that determine legal powers, procedures, and legal personalities (secondary rules). All legal orders comprise norms that impose duties to perform or refrain from certain actions on natural persons or legal entities (primary rules). Legal orders are collections of norms, be it the law of nation-states, supranational entities or international law. Stefan Magen, in International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences (Second Edition), 2015 Positive Law and Social Practice

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